Log inPatreon vs. SubscribeStar
Hey everyone - as a heads up, I sent the following LONG message to our 1,700 Patreon supporters just a few moments ago, and I wanted to copy SubscribeStar users with this message as well to say thanks for supporting us here on SubStar instead of Patreon. The message follows:
"Patreon Supporters,
As I write this message, I'm on a flight back from Germany after a successful trip covering IWA and a Patreon meetup in Nuremberg. We are still cranking out videos of awesome guns and gear from Europe, guns and gear which could find their way into the United States. The show was a huge win for us: In just a few days, we hit half a million views and thousands of new subscribers on our new channel, TFBTV Show Time (make sure to subscribe at YouTube.com/TFBTVShowTime because none of the IWA videos were posted to the TFBTV main channel).
In addition to asking you to subscribe to TFBTV Show Time, I have one more very important favor to ask, but first, I want to thank you for your support. Because of your help, we are truly independent, honest, and we rely on no one for funding. Yes, we have few sponsorship arrangements, and only with companies that we have trusted for years; sponsorships that I personally approve before they are official (such as Silencer Shop, Glock, Top Gun Supply, Ventura Munitions, Blue Alpha, and now, towards the end of this year, Blue Force Gear) because TFBTV will only work with people that I would endorse regardless of their sponsorship status. In other words, if I don't use or trust the product myself, the manufacturer/vendor will not meet the standard and cannot advertise on TFBTV. Period. That's exactly why you don't see plugs for apps/video games (RAID: Shadow Legends and World of Tanks being two prime offenders) or gold dealers or cheap security cameras or metal wallets or Chinese-made flashlights or countless other grifters that contact us on a daily basis to offer thousands of dollars *per video* just for a 30 second endorsement. If you watch other YouTube channels, you know precisely what I am talking about. Moreover, most of our YouTube videos are demonetized or monetized on a limited basis because YouTube discriminates against gun content, which hampers our AdSense revenue.
Instead, we rely primarily on you, and your Patreon support goes to fund the entire TFB blog, not just TFBTV or myself or Hop personally. No company paid for this trip to IWA in Nuremberg; if you noticed from our IWA videos, not even our usual 15 second bumpers in front of the video are included, no shout outs at the end of the video, nothing. We paid thousands of dollars out of pocket and missed a week of work because you gave us the ability to do that without massive personal, financial repercussions.
We do not want this independent means of operating TFBTV to end, and you probably don't either, but it very well could, and very soon.
Several years ago, Patreon threatened to shut us down on this platform because they did not like our gun promos, giveaways, and coupon codes for gun companies that we hosted here, even though each were completely legal. In particular, they considered promo codes to gun industry partners and gun giveaways to be - their words - "distribution of weapons that violate community standards." As a side note, I find their deliberate choice of the word "weapons" to describe firearms to be patronizing to the gun community.
Specifically, Patreon told us - verbatim: "[I]n the interest of keeping Patreon safe for the entire community, we include firearms and its paraphernalia in our definition of weapons. As such, facilitating their sale and distribution is something that is not supportable on Patreon."
To get around this, we asked if we could give away gift cards to online gun retailers like Top Gun Supply or just brick and mortar stores like Academy or Wal-Mart. But Patreon still characterized this as "distributing weapons." Specifically, they told us:
"In regards to gift cards - this may be complicated as a single store may sell a range of items. The [Patreon] team's review of this type of reward will consider what a creator's campaign content is, the store's (to where a gift card is to be applied) primary merchandise and target customer are and exercise discretion when necessary. [For example] using Dick's sporting goods and your primary content being guns and weapons-related, a gift card to Dick's would not be allowed as a reward."
In other words, TFBTV could give away a gift certificate to Bass Pro Shops if we were a fishing channel, but because we are a gun channel, Patreon considers even giving out Wal-Mart gift cards as "distributing weapons."
As a result, we removed all of our promo codes, and we stopped promoting the gun giveaways on Patreon (notice that they have not been mentioned on the platform at all in years). We also decided to open a SubscribeStar account because SubscribeStar is a gun-friendly platform, as opposed to Patreon, which is merely semi-gun-tolerant.
However, this week, after years without issue on Patreon, we received a notice that we were in violation of the community guidelines. The notice can be viewed here:
https://twitter.com/jjreeves/status/1500475590675255297
Patreon has not told us how we have violated the community guidelines, and we do not. Specifically, Patreon's guidelines for "weapons" reads as follows:
"Illegal activity:
We don’t allow pages that collect money for an illegal purpose, or that encourage others to break the law. Creators may not promote illegal weapons, drug manufacturing techniques or distribution, or property crime. "
TFBTV does not promote illegal weapons.
But in a condescending message, Patreon told *us* that we must reach out to *them* if we want to know how we are in violation of the guidelines, and if we don't seek them out to investigate, they would suspend our Patreon account. In other words, we are currently labeled as being out of compliance, but we don't know what we did to fall out of compliance, and Patreon has placed the burden on us to discover how we are now, suddenly, "non-compliant."
In the same breath, I applaud Patreon's mission to make sure artists and creators are paid for their work without being slaves to YouTube or whatever other platform - Patreon helped us when YouTube began cracking down on gun channels. But by the same token, now, we are becoming slaves to Patreon - the new boss is the same as the old boss. Because we need Patreon, we must bow to their rules.
Patreon is more popular than SubscribeStar. It has more users. For most of you, Patreon is just easier to do than SubscribeStar, and that's fine. For the moment, Patreon also has the best back-end and technical features for creators and users than SubscribeStar. But we also aren't under constant scrutiny just for being gun (sorry, "weapons") content creators on SubscribeStar.
I agree that crowdfunding sites should have community standards - absolutely. But they should be reasonable and enforced as written. Patreon prohibits "promot[ing] illegal weapons." We do no such thing. Further, I fundamentally disagree that we in the gun community should be marginalized or shamed for "facilitating the distribution of weapons" when our conduct is completely legal, safe, moral, apolitical, and enshrined in the First and Second Amendments of the United States Constitution. Certainly, as a private company, Patreon has no obligation to ensure the exercise of TFBTV's rights, and I firmly believe that private businesses should be able to make or enforce their own rules, just as we can choose which business to patronize. But here, Patreon's own written standards only address "illegal weapons." It's unfair to TFBTV that Patreon gets to make up the rules as they go.
For those reasons, I would ask that you consider either moving your patronage of TFBTV to SubscribeStar, or jointly supporting us on both platforms.
subscribestar.com/tfbtv
We have a relationship of mutual tolerance with Patreon, and I know there are a number of gun content creators who are very happy with Patreon, including OUTSTANDING creators we support with our own Patreon money like Polenar Tactical, MrGunsNGear, InRangeTV, GY6Vids, Kirsten Joy Weiss, and others. But for some reason, we - TFBTV - have again found ourselves at loggerheads with Patreon.
I am not asking you to leave Patreon.
I am not asking you to boycott Patreon.
Like Clint Smith says, it's nothing personal.
I respect Patreon's mission and I understand their concerns, but I cannot let Patreon harass us again for completely legal and safe activities without telling you about it, and I cannot risk the independence of TFBTV on a viewer support platform that can one day up and decide to terminate our account even when we don't violate their rules. This would be a massive blow to TFBTV. We have 1,700 supporters on Patreon and the channel's future would be absolutely jeopardized if we lost that support because we "facilitate weapons."
So please consider moving to SubStar. And yes, your rewards will track if you change platforms, as well as your Discord server status. Everything will remain the same if you make the swap - we download the Patreon records every month. Please keep a personal record of your Patreon support for your information, and we can verify your status when you email [email protected] for the $30/$60/$100 patches or anything else.
No matter what, thank you. I hope you all know that you are very important to me personally, and it is because of you that I can provide you with unbiased, meaningful content instead of junk ads and open shilling.
Thank you for that.
-James"
"Patreon Supporters,
As I write this message, I'm on a flight back from Germany after a successful trip covering IWA and a Patreon meetup in Nuremberg. We are still cranking out videos of awesome guns and gear from Europe, guns and gear which could find their way into the United States. The show was a huge win for us: In just a few days, we hit half a million views and thousands of new subscribers on our new channel, TFBTV Show Time (make sure to subscribe at YouTube.com/TFBTVShowTime because none of the IWA videos were posted to the TFBTV main channel).
In addition to asking you to subscribe to TFBTV Show Time, I have one more very important favor to ask, but first, I want to thank you for your support. Because of your help, we are truly independent, honest, and we rely on no one for funding. Yes, we have few sponsorship arrangements, and only with companies that we have trusted for years; sponsorships that I personally approve before they are official (such as Silencer Shop, Glock, Top Gun Supply, Ventura Munitions, Blue Alpha, and now, towards the end of this year, Blue Force Gear) because TFBTV will only work with people that I would endorse regardless of their sponsorship status. In other words, if I don't use or trust the product myself, the manufacturer/vendor will not meet the standard and cannot advertise on TFBTV. Period. That's exactly why you don't see plugs for apps/video games (RAID: Shadow Legends and World of Tanks being two prime offenders) or gold dealers or cheap security cameras or metal wallets or Chinese-made flashlights or countless other grifters that contact us on a daily basis to offer thousands of dollars *per video* just for a 30 second endorsement. If you watch other YouTube channels, you know precisely what I am talking about. Moreover, most of our YouTube videos are demonetized or monetized on a limited basis because YouTube discriminates against gun content, which hampers our AdSense revenue.
Instead, we rely primarily on you, and your Patreon support goes to fund the entire TFB blog, not just TFBTV or myself or Hop personally. No company paid for this trip to IWA in Nuremberg; if you noticed from our IWA videos, not even our usual 15 second bumpers in front of the video are included, no shout outs at the end of the video, nothing. We paid thousands of dollars out of pocket and missed a week of work because you gave us the ability to do that without massive personal, financial repercussions.
We do not want this independent means of operating TFBTV to end, and you probably don't either, but it very well could, and very soon.
Several years ago, Patreon threatened to shut us down on this platform because they did not like our gun promos, giveaways, and coupon codes for gun companies that we hosted here, even though each were completely legal. In particular, they considered promo codes to gun industry partners and gun giveaways to be - their words - "distribution of weapons that violate community standards." As a side note, I find their deliberate choice of the word "weapons" to describe firearms to be patronizing to the gun community.
Specifically, Patreon told us - verbatim: "[I]n the interest of keeping Patreon safe for the entire community, we include firearms and its paraphernalia in our definition of weapons. As such, facilitating their sale and distribution is something that is not supportable on Patreon."
To get around this, we asked if we could give away gift cards to online gun retailers like Top Gun Supply or just brick and mortar stores like Academy or Wal-Mart. But Patreon still characterized this as "distributing weapons." Specifically, they told us:
"In regards to gift cards - this may be complicated as a single store may sell a range of items. The [Patreon] team's review of this type of reward will consider what a creator's campaign content is, the store's (to where a gift card is to be applied) primary merchandise and target customer are and exercise discretion when necessary. [For example] using Dick's sporting goods and your primary content being guns and weapons-related, a gift card to Dick's would not be allowed as a reward."
In other words, TFBTV could give away a gift certificate to Bass Pro Shops if we were a fishing channel, but because we are a gun channel, Patreon considers even giving out Wal-Mart gift cards as "distributing weapons."
As a result, we removed all of our promo codes, and we stopped promoting the gun giveaways on Patreon (notice that they have not been mentioned on the platform at all in years). We also decided to open a SubscribeStar account because SubscribeStar is a gun-friendly platform, as opposed to Patreon, which is merely semi-gun-tolerant.
However, this week, after years without issue on Patreon, we received a notice that we were in violation of the community guidelines. The notice can be viewed here:
https://twitter.com/jjreeves/status/1500475590675255297
Patreon has not told us how we have violated the community guidelines, and we do not. Specifically, Patreon's guidelines for "weapons" reads as follows:
"Illegal activity:
We don’t allow pages that collect money for an illegal purpose, or that encourage others to break the law. Creators may not promote illegal weapons, drug manufacturing techniques or distribution, or property crime. "
TFBTV does not promote illegal weapons.
But in a condescending message, Patreon told *us* that we must reach out to *them* if we want to know how we are in violation of the guidelines, and if we don't seek them out to investigate, they would suspend our Patreon account. In other words, we are currently labeled as being out of compliance, but we don't know what we did to fall out of compliance, and Patreon has placed the burden on us to discover how we are now, suddenly, "non-compliant."
In the same breath, I applaud Patreon's mission to make sure artists and creators are paid for their work without being slaves to YouTube or whatever other platform - Patreon helped us when YouTube began cracking down on gun channels. But by the same token, now, we are becoming slaves to Patreon - the new boss is the same as the old boss. Because we need Patreon, we must bow to their rules.
Patreon is more popular than SubscribeStar. It has more users. For most of you, Patreon is just easier to do than SubscribeStar, and that's fine. For the moment, Patreon also has the best back-end and technical features for creators and users than SubscribeStar. But we also aren't under constant scrutiny just for being gun (sorry, "weapons") content creators on SubscribeStar.
I agree that crowdfunding sites should have community standards - absolutely. But they should be reasonable and enforced as written. Patreon prohibits "promot[ing] illegal weapons." We do no such thing. Further, I fundamentally disagree that we in the gun community should be marginalized or shamed for "facilitating the distribution of weapons" when our conduct is completely legal, safe, moral, apolitical, and enshrined in the First and Second Amendments of the United States Constitution. Certainly, as a private company, Patreon has no obligation to ensure the exercise of TFBTV's rights, and I firmly believe that private businesses should be able to make or enforce their own rules, just as we can choose which business to patronize. But here, Patreon's own written standards only address "illegal weapons." It's unfair to TFBTV that Patreon gets to make up the rules as they go.
For those reasons, I would ask that you consider either moving your patronage of TFBTV to SubscribeStar, or jointly supporting us on both platforms.
subscribestar.com/tfbtv
We have a relationship of mutual tolerance with Patreon, and I know there are a number of gun content creators who are very happy with Patreon, including OUTSTANDING creators we support with our own Patreon money like Polenar Tactical, MrGunsNGear, InRangeTV, GY6Vids, Kirsten Joy Weiss, and others. But for some reason, we - TFBTV - have again found ourselves at loggerheads with Patreon.
I am not asking you to leave Patreon.
I am not asking you to boycott Patreon.
Like Clint Smith says, it's nothing personal.
I respect Patreon's mission and I understand their concerns, but I cannot let Patreon harass us again for completely legal and safe activities without telling you about it, and I cannot risk the independence of TFBTV on a viewer support platform that can one day up and decide to terminate our account even when we don't violate their rules. This would be a massive blow to TFBTV. We have 1,700 supporters on Patreon and the channel's future would be absolutely jeopardized if we lost that support because we "facilitate weapons."
So please consider moving to SubStar. And yes, your rewards will track if you change platforms, as well as your Discord server status. Everything will remain the same if you make the swap - we download the Patreon records every month. Please keep a personal record of your Patreon support for your information, and we can verify your status when you email [email protected] for the $30/$60/$100 patches or anything else.
No matter what, thank you. I hope you all know that you are very important to me personally, and it is because of you that I can provide you with unbiased, meaningful content instead of junk ads and open shilling.
Thank you for that.
-James"
Long ago I considered keeping both Patreon and SubStar accounts for the giveaway edge, but let's be honest: I'd rather not have ANY of my money go through them AT ALL than to win a free gun or gift card or whatever. Fuck Patreon.
Lets just simply cut off everyone and everything that is sensitive when it comes to firearms. Fuck them.
I tried to change my tier (increase) here on SubscribeStar to help out… wouldn’t let me without cancelling.
I will find a way to increase even if I need to use a second email for an account. Are there discount codes anywhere here on on Patreon?
Been here since December.
This blatant war against gun owners and people that just want to be left alone is getting disgusting. I signed up for SubStar specifically to support TFBtv because it felt right in my heart (totally not win any of the cool shit that's given away, only sinners do something so shameful). You kids will always have my support. Not to mention you make me laugh and it's something I can force my girlfriend to watch too.
patreon has a record of screwing over ppl with different political views.i have never used them. subscribe star isn't that hard to use.small price to pay to not support naxi like behavior. u crushed it james and im proud to be a new member of subscribestar.
I support you guys on SubscribeStar...never considered patreon. Love your content. Keep up the good work.
Made the Switch ! Perhaps a new patch ?