Glenn Fleishman Interrogates the Past

Journalists and Patronage

(See also my essay on Patreon and its literal problem with nazis.)

It's about ethics in journalism. Seriously, it is. The rise of direct funding of creative and business projects through Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and others, and the ongoing support of same through Patreon (which is not sui generis, but generates the only substantive volume), brings out new issues regarding conflicts of issues between journalists and the people and organizations they cover.

This has been highlighted speciously as a major component of GamerGate (GG). Somewhere a few months ago, it became a trope in the harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn (that morphed into GG) that journalists contributing to Patreon projects were de facto corrupt: their collusion in helping a creator make things on a regular basis (Patreon is per item created or per month) meant that they couldn't fairly review or write about that creator's work.

There's a kernel of truth

Crowdfunding

The Problem with Patreon: Nazis, Pedophilia Pushers, Harassers, and More

This post updated with information about 8chan on December 16.

Note: On December 21, Patreon updated its guidelines for creators. We have yet to see precisely how they will apply them, but it is likely that the three examples below will be warned or banned.

Update: On January 5, both weev and the 8chan Patreon account pages now show the message, "This page has been removed for not complying with Patreon Community Guidelines."

Update: In December 2018, the New York Times reported on Patreon removing creators for a variety of what it characterized as hate speech and violations of its policies, and that 10% of Patreon’s staff now deals with “safety and trust.”

Patreon is the single greatest thing to come into being to support the ongoing needs of creative people by allowing those who want to ask for financial contributions that allow them the time to make art,