@davidgerard I'm guessing it is tax reasons.

Naturally, Patreon's been scummy and cagey with its userbase for the past couple of years, so who knows?

@davidgerard Patreon did this before, a few years ago-- they moved charges from the US to the UK-- people reasoned that it was iff you were pledging to any creators they deemed NSFW, but Patreon was entirely non-transparent about it (support basically told creators to tell their patrons to take it up with their banks)

But yeah, same story: Patreon moves their charges internationally, this trips fraud warnings for everyone, Patreon support is just "there's been a slight increase in declined payments we don't know why 🤷"

If this plays out like last time then every month I will have to reconfirm that the transaction isn't fraud, and also I will get levied an "international service assessment" on top of my pledges. I'm also particularly annoyed that Patreon makes me do this dance _again_.

@davidgerard LiberaPay and OpenCollective are sensible, run as non-profits, accept payments from and to many locations, and finally are open and transparent services that don't track their users and sell their data.

https://tosdr.org/en/service/1010

@davidgerard I have no patronees listed. I have no payment methods listed. Oh joy. I'm hesitant to make any changes right now in case they can work out how to revert my account

I am still receiving emails from Patreon with the

@davidgerard Any mention of which Irish bank? (Assuming "thru Ireland" means an Irish bank. And at least one of them used to have a track record with me of thinking any online US cc transaction was "fraud."

And I'd certainly guess taxes as at least one of the reasons

@davidgerard

Ugh. FWIW latest update on https://status.patreon.com/ says

" Update - We have fixed the root cause and are working actively with Payoneer to restore payouts. We expect to restore them today, and we appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this.
Aug 03, 2023 - 10:04 PDT"

@davidgerard Testing large-scale in production, that's *brave*.

Something big like that could really be more handled more gracefully with staggered rollout, $1 test charges and an email beforehand for those affected. Or you can be too cheap and/or short-sighted and burn down your literal "service" that you provide.

@davidgerard

Ah, so clarity found, it is Dublin, Ireland, not Dublin, California.

This would be great news for Ireland had the transfer process been managed by people who use failure modes effects analysis (FMEA) before the make big changes.

@davidgerard

Thank you for this

There's one creator I'm particularly concerned about and they don't know their way around IT things

@davidgerard

If a business moves to Ireland its almost certainly to avoid taxes.

Ireland is kinda scum world wide, stealing everyone's fair taxes by letting transnationals off the hook for the taxes they owe elsewhere.

Ireland's governments have been, are being kinda scum.

Harming all other countries for their own benefit.

@erkhyan

I think this might be part of your problem.

@davidgerard FWIW Patreon have been billing from Ireland for some supporters for ages, possibly depending on where the supporters were based (eg I’ve been billed from Ireland since before 2020, and am based in New Zealand).

So I guess at least part of the story is someone decided to try to consolidate billing in one location “for reasons”… and that didn’t go well.