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FediForum September 2024:

Payments on the Fediverse: sub.club & Decentralized Payments

/2024-09/session/6-f/

Convener: Bart Decrem (@bart@moth.social)

Participants who chose to record their names here:

Tags / links to resources / technology discussed, related to this session:

Website: https://sub.club

Discord: https://discord.gg/9F279yjQE4

Notes

Article about sub.club: https://wedistribute.org/2024/09/subclub-paid-subscriptions/

Inspired by last FediForum by Evan P doing his joke about a private Mastodon account that has to be paid to follow. The concept was Patreon for the fediverse.

Sub.club takes 6% and absorbs all Stripe fees for now.

Integration with Ice Cubes and another app with a paid feed.

Standardized subscribe button in the fediverse:

  • FEP WEN FAM (anuj: let’s talk)
  • Ben Pate: There was a FEP about payment LINKS, 0837
  • Anuj: Will OS in a few months.

Challenge: How does this not suffer the same fate as Patreon? That is, Apple changed the rules that require third parties to pay their toll… Seems to put Ice Cubes at risk?

  • Bart: We have to get a looooot bigger to catch Apple’s eye
  • Another small app losing against Apple: (techdirt link below)
  • Bart: This is a web service, consumed via Threads and Mastodon etc, not an app; OnlyFans might be more applicable analogy.
  • Apple prohibits linking to websites for payment too.
  • Chris Messina: How protocol-specific is this? Note that Spotify allows OAuth sub hooks from other apps to be recognized in Spotify.
  • Spotify feature that enables external memberships to grant access to members-only podcasts: https://stratechery.com/2021/passport/

Bart: Partnership we’re announcing next week to share sub authorizations.

Bart: Longform integration is coming soon (snippet public links to long form).

Chris: What experiences are you looking to monetize? OnlyFans has unlocks in addition to subs; teasers or fremium-publishing patreon style is just one model…

Challenge: payment providers

  • Stripe prohibits adult content, marijuana legalization politics, and many other legal but edgy content creators. https://stripe.com/en-se/legal/restricted-businesses
  • Bart: Uses Stripe today, but would be nice to have other options.
  • Jeremiah: The challenge is that most payment processors also do not allow 2-sided marketplaces. This is a 2-sided marketplace because sub.club is the receiver of funds that are then distributed to a creator.

Could be useful to take advantage of election to drive donations and building the infra.

Chris: Create a competitive leaderboard for polticial donations in this election cycle — to promote monetization familiarization (just like Facebook did before) https://www.facebook.com/fundraisers/

Chris: Could use total count of boosts as a way to create a matching donation on an instance basis.

Chris: Medium Partner Program does partial royalties distributions: https://medium.com/partner-program

Patreon creators feel like they’re owned by their platform. They can’t leave.

Related links: