Patreon fees update (Patreon)

First of all, I'd like to inform you that Mastodon v2.1.0 has gotten its first release candidate. It is being tested and v2.1.0 will be released fully in about a week.

Now, you must have heard about the AWFUL changes to Patreon's system. I absolutely do not agree with that change. I'd rather have paid them a larger percentage of what I get than mess with how things are displayed/charged to patrons. No doubt a lot of $1 pledges will disappear now.

You can support Mastodon on a different platform, Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/Mastodon/

Liberapay is an anonymous recurrent donations platform. It does not charge such fees.

However, because it is anonymous, there are no extra perks/rewards I can give through it, other than the reward of ongoing development and maintenance of Mastodon and mastodon.social. If that is okay with you and if you are going to cancel your $1 pledge here, perhaps you will be willing to support the project on Liberapay instead.

I am really angry at Patreon. It is a most obvious cash grab on their part, and it hurts everyone - patrons who will be charged more and creators who will lose patrons. It is NOT about sustainability, because Patreon bundles all pledges in one monthly charge, which would result in one transaction fee by a payment provider; instead they charge these supposed "processing fees" on each individual pledge. That is nonsense. Unfortunately, they seemed to have ignored all feedback. What an awful Christmas present.