Patreon's Shitty RSS Feed Issue (Patreon)

Hey friends, I am posting this both as a recording and as text for those who would rather just read.

I wanted to give folks who aren't listening to my current shows a heads up, because I've talked about it on recent recordings but some of y'all might not be listening to those.

So, Patreon recently unveiled a new feature that I was very excited about: the ability to separate my podcasts into separate RSS feeds! This meant patrons can now follow ONLY the feeds they're interested in, and not have to scroll through tons of posts or use in-app collections. They can get, for example, only the Hunger Games feed via whatever podcatcher they already use. I was thrilled! This is what I've been wanting for ages!

Now you all know that I will cop to making a mistake, and I definitely did make one here, which I will explain in a moment. However, I think Patreon also fucked up and if things had been rolled out better and with more clarity (and if they had waited until the functionality were less buggy) we wouldn't be here.

In the explanation on their page to guide creators through set-up of the multiple feeds, Patreon explains that there is a "combined feed" that will contain everything for those Patrons who listen to all my episodes. When I looked at my setup before making changes, I had a feed just labeled "unspoiled" and another labeled "All Podcasts" which has a label under it that says "existing members will see combined feed by default".

Now you tell me, which of these feeds would you have thought was the essential, main RSS feed that needed to remain untouched?

I think you can see where I'm going with this.

I cracked my knuckles and got started creating an RSS feed for my most popular current show, The Hunger Games, and I decided to just delete the default example feed simply labeled "unspoiled" and leave the All Podcasts feed, to avoid confusion for myself. There was no warning pop-up explaining that THIS was the current feed, I wasn't asked to re-enter my password. I just clicked delete and poof, done.

Turns out, All Podcasts really just means "everything that you've already added to a new podcast RSS feed will also be added here." And since I had deleted that other RSS feed, everything was ALSO wiped from All Podcasts.

When I started getting messages from people that their RSS had stopped working or that there were older shows they were trying to access and suddenly couldn't, I realized my mistake. I started a new feed and tried to bulk-add posts, only to be met with an error message. I tried for days.

I got in touch with Patreon two weeks ago, both via the regular help desk and my Patreon Ambassador Program contacts. I was basically told, "Sorry! Our bad!" and assured they were "passing on the info about the errors" to their tech support, and then left to swing in the wind. I followed up asking if they could just add my posts to a feed from their end (I was told no) and in the meantime tried repeatedly to add episodes to the replacement feed on my end. I was able to successfully add a few at random a couple times, and then it stopped functioning altogether.

FINALLY last Thursday I got an email that my issue was getting escalated, and I waited for ANY update before sending my own follow-up email yesterday. I still have not received a reply.

Suffice to say, I'm livid. Yes, I fucked up by deleting that feed. But the whole process was so poorly explained and unclear, and apparently so impossible to reverse, that I'm still flabbergasted it was possible for me to fuck things up that completely and that easily. Not only that, but the complete lack of urgency on Patreon's part with an issue this serious and all-encompassing is frankly insulting. We are talking about over a decade of content made suddenly inaccessible to any patron who relied on RSS! And in two weeks of frantic support tickets and emailing I've gotten a handful of apathetic replies with no answers and suggestions that are impossible due to their own buggy system.

I'm so sorry if you're experiencing these issues. Believe me, I'm doing all I can on my end, and I'm attempting to add episodes to the replacement feed multiple times a day just to see if maybe at least that bug is gone. So far, no luck. I'm trying to set up other RSS feeds for series as well so that they can at least make it into the All Podcasts feed, and of course I'm mostly coming up against the same bug but occasionally those are working. Why those and not the other? Who can say? It's all a very fun, not-at-all infuriating mystery.

All I can say is stay tuned, and trust me that I'm on it. Wish me luck.