[danShumway]

Patreon does not require creators to pause payments when they go on break.

But that should obviously be a choice that is available to creators, for a variety of reasons. They might be treating Patreon more like a subscription service than a donation platform. They might have personal psychological hang-ups (read about why per-creation pricing is so popular with some creators). I would criticize Patreon if it forced creators into that decision. Forcing them out of that decision is also worth critiquing.

It ought to be a creator's choice when they do and don't charge their patrons. It is not Patreon or Apple's job to decide with that level of detail what the relationship between a creator and their fans should look like. And creators who voluntarily decide (for whatever reason) to temporarily pause charging fans are not doing anything wrong.

[throwaway290]

> Patreon does not require creators to pause payments when they go on break.

I didn't say it does, but someone apparently thinks they should. That someone doesn't get the idea behind patreon

> It ought to be a creator's choice

There's plenty choice. Sell your stuff, there are plenty platforms for that. Sell physical media. Stream. Patronage is a specific thing.

[danShumway]

> but someone apparently thinks they should.

To be 1000% clear, the someone who is demanding this feature... is creators. This is a feature that creators heavily use, by their own choice, because it helps them psychologically or because they prefer this style of interaction with fans, or for whatever reason because they don't have to justify their decisions to anyone, least of all commenters on HN.

> Patronage is a specific thing.

Patreon has not been a donation-specific platform since tiers were invented; and this kind of control over payments was always part of the platform for both creators using it as a sales platform and to creators using it as a donation platform. Patreon hosts a wide variety of creators who approach audience interaction in a variety of ways. This has always been the case.

It's wild to me that you're going to jump on here gatekeeping creators off of Patreon, and to act like it's somehow improper for me to suggest that the significant portion of the creator-base on Patreon that uses the platform in a way that makes them happy... should be allowed to keep using it that way.

People have this weird habit of taking creators who are making in many cases at or below minimum wage doing things that they love and subjecting them to purity tests about whether or not they're living up to some platonic ideal of what some random person on the internet personally believes fan-creator relationships should look like.

Are you seriously offended that some creators like having the ability to choose when they charge their patrons?

> doesn't get the idea behind patreon

The idea behind Patreon is that creators should be able to make money doing things that they love in a way that is comfortable to them. Your aesthetic attraction to the idea of a donation platform is not really relevant to that goal. You're not sticking up for creators if you gatekeep how they interact with fans. And your ideal of how patronage is defined has never been the exclusive model for how Patreon as a platform has worked -- nor is it consistent with the model that Apple is forcing creators into.