>>They did NOT present it very well, and pretty much sprung it on
>>people. When you're handling money for people, this is not a good
>>level of transparency when you want to make such a sweeping change to
>>the system.
>
>The timing is really unfortunate, too, given that I've just spent the
>last month watching people on YouTube say things to the general effect
>of, "Don't sweat the adpocalypse too much, my Patreon is where it's at
>these days anyway."
>
>In fact, now that I've said that, the air of undue haste hanging
>around the Patreon thing starts to look more explicable.

It does make me wonder more and more. Especially since YouTube has already been making changes with regards to where you need to be to create links in the end-of-video bumper card, basically telling people they can only do things there if they've managed to get to a point of "success" in YouTube's own ecosystem (100,000 subs/views, part of their Creators program), basically trying to ensure that they have some "control" over the money making from content making (and incidentally making controlling who gets to show up in the feeds for the sake of advertisers' requirements far easier, since now if you want to make money, it's YouTube's ads or not at all). Yes, I did kind of think that was a "please don't make money outside of us until we give the say so (because the advertisers want us to control the content more), at which point you can diversify", since while they allowed links in the description still, those were far less likely to be a traffic generator because viewers had been effectively trained to just click the end bumper links instead (links in the description usually require a click to actually show up).

This happening does, in fact, actually reduce the ability to diversify. It doesn't eliminate it, but Patreon might well become at best, "nice extra pocket money, just don't build your career here."