Patreon's CEO Has a Radical Idea to Make a Better Internet

You seem fundamentally optimistic that there is a way to make an internet that is better.

What are we gonna do? Let it be like this? What? I don't like the way the internet is going. I don't like it as a creator. I don't like posting and having it feel like a slot machine. That fucking sucks. It shouldn't be like that for creative people and for the for their communities. And so I think it's worth trying something else. And I think there's gonna be a lot of people along the way who say, Jack, that's stupid. Jack, what are you doing? You can't win against TikTok. Jack, you're just copying social media. Jack, it's never gonna work. Fine, people can say that all day long. And I don't, sorry, Lizzie, it sounds like I'm throwing shade at you. No, no, no. I don't mean to be. I'm just saying I'm used to skepticism about these things. And at the end of the day, like, if you're not gonna try, What are we doing? Like, may as well try.

I'm gonna start the way I always start, which is introduce yourself. Tell me who you are and what you do.

My name is Jack Conte. I am a creator. I've been a creator on the internet since, oh gosh, 2007. And in 2013, I started a company called Patreon, and I'm still CEO of that company. I'm in a couple bands called Pomplamoose and Scary Pockets and Scary Goldings. And I make videos and music and all that kind of stuff.

So you and I met, I think, about almost 2 years ago at this big tech conference. And at the time, you were all fired up about this idea of making the internet better. And then about a year later, I saw a video you did, an opinion video for The New York Times with the title, I'm Building an Algorithm That Doesn't Rot Your Brain. And in it, there was a section where you said TikTok and Instagram and Facebook are optimizing for attention, which, yeah, we know. What are you optimizing for?

Getting creators paid for their labor, number one. Long-term relationships, number two. And human creation, number three. And I could talk a little bit more about each of those things.

Yeah.

But maybe at the core of it, I don't like what the current internet is doing to humans or doing to me. I feel like a— I feel like I'm an experiment in a Petri dish, and I feel like my limbic system is getting tested every day with what is sort of maximally fixating me and grabbing my attention. And I think it's bad for us. It certainly feels bad for me. I'm tired of logging on to the internet and having it feel like rocket fuel straight into my veins. And I just don't buy, what it comes down to is I don't buy that this is the only way to have media and community on the internet. I don't buy it. I think there's gotta be a different way. In fact, I remember when there was a different way. Just a decade ago, the internet did not feel like this. It felt like a much better place.

You think it felt fun then?

I do. There were elements of it that felt fun 10 years ago, certainly 15 years ago. I remember when my bands first started uploading on the internet and we were finding our community and finding people. And yeah, there were elements of fun to it. I mean, the comment section was a bit gnarlier back then than it is now, but But yeah, it was, very specifically, the thing about it that was very different for creative people was you could actually reach your followers. When you built a subscription base, when you built a follower base, and then you posted your next thing, you could reach the people who signed up to see you. And you can't do that anymore. Every time you upload something on the internet now, it feels like a, putting a coin in a slot machine and maybe you'll, maybe you'll reach the people who subscribe to you and maybe you won't. And with that as the sort of system, it's impossible to build a community. It's impossible to build a business as a creative person.

So I think the options there are like, stand on the street corner and play music and, you know, busk for your dinner. The tech CEO version of that is you guys release this discovery network to creators on your platform. Um, and I want you to help me understand it because you've got a home feed which has got posts, newsletters, podcasts, videos from, from people who fans already follow. Their memberships are at the top. But then also free posts, videos, things from recommended creators and communities. I need you to explain to me how that is not— another social network?

It certainly, I can totally see why it looks like that. And I know there's a lot of people who, in fact, there's a bunch of creators who are saying like, hey, is this another social network? I don't talk about it like that. I don't tell our team it's a social network. I'm not saying let's go copy social media features. I'm, in fact, I'm asking our team very specifically to not pull from social media and to not look at social media when we're building. At the core of it, if you optimize for watch time, if you optimize for what will somebody click on, what will somebody— what will a human watch or listen to or read for the longest possible time, you end up with stuff that is highly addictive and stuff that fixates us and stuff that's bad for our brains versus If you try to pay creative people for their work, or if you invest in people building long-term relationships with the people who actually subscribe to see those people, you end up with a very different system. So I actually, yeah, even if some people call it social media, that's kind of okay with me. The main reason is because At the end of the day, we're trying to get people to be able to build communities and followings and actually be able to reach those people and have conversation with them and actually be able to build a business with them. That's the difference. On Facebook, as a creator, everything is a gamble. Every post, I have no idea how many people I'm gonna reach. I can't make any money on the platform. I don't get paid for my labor as a creator. And on Patreon, we're you know, paying creators billions of dollars a year.

So when you're making these adjustments, right, 'cause this is a shift in terms of what you guys do, are you thinking about it from the standpoint of how a creator experiences that or how an audience member, a fan, a member of the community engages with that?

I think both. I mean, we have to think about it from the perspective of both sides. From the creator's perspective, I mean, this is sort of where Patreon came from, right? My whole perspective as a creator myself, You know, the problems are very clear, which I've sort of just outlined.

Yeah.

And then from a fan's perspective, you know, I think there's also a bunch of problems. The internet feels addictive. I don't hear from the people that I want to hear from. Like, I miss things that are important to me. because even though I've signed up for them, I can't see them in the future. So yeah, there's a bunch of problems, I think, both from the fan perspective and from the creator perspective. And we definitely think about it from both. I think it's important that we do. One of the things that our creators have told us, you know, very specifically is that like they rely on Patreon to, be able to, I mean, this is the thing that we've been saying for years and years. They rely on Patreon to be able to reach their most important fans. A creator's most important fans, that like 5% of your audience, you know, that wants to go to your show, wants to get your merchandise, wants to listen to every episode, wants to download the course, that 5% of your fans is a really important portion of your fans.

Are they more important than just the sort of spray across the internet? portion, do you think, in the traditional model?

I think so. As a creator myself, I think so. If I had the opportunity to, to reach millions of people, or, I mean, this is, this comes back to the Kevin Kelly 1,000 True Fans theory, right? Like, if I had the opportunity to reach millions of people or find my tribe who really cared, for me as a creator, I want to find my tribe who really cares.

I, I, I remember when we were talking, um, in 2024, one of the things you talked about was like, actually, you want to bring those people along, bring the audience along to a live show, to get your merch, that this is a much more— I mean, it's actually very old-fashioned. It feels like a newspaper subscription in the journalist brain, right? That I think that, that even though it's not all that different from how an influencer— I know you hate that word, might behave on Instagram, the objective is different than, say, selling ads.

Completely different. Yeah, I mean, if you think about the models on Patreon, there are creators with a few thousand subscribers on Patreon, and they make tens of thousands of dollars a month. And—

Really? Oh yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are creators, yeah, there are creators on Patreon who are making millions of dollars a year, right? They're making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. But the bulk of the creators on Patreon, over half of our business, over half of our payments volume goes to creators who are making what we call like the sort of middle-class creativity. It's creators that are making between $1,000 a month and $30,000 a month. So it's not necessarily the Taylor Swifts of the world. It's not like the biggest creators on the planet. It's this emerging group of people who are building businesses with, you know, with their 1,000 true fans, with the people that they found that are sort of powering their business and their community.

Your start into this world is obviously as a musician, but you guys just hit what, $10 billion paid out to creators? That is a lot of money. Talk to me about what you think were the biggest, kind of most important points to get you to that place, and then what your vision is for the next 5 years.

I think maybe the first one is just starting the company. The first one is just saying, hey, the internet is going in a direction that I don't like. As a creator, I'm being told that I should upload to these platforms and give them my labor for free, and I should do it in exchange for the exposure. I mean, honestly, it's kind of hard to even like remember that time period, but that was not that long ago when like, if you told the platforms like, hey, you should pay me for uploading to this platform, the platforms are like, why would we pay you? Like, if you're not happy with our service, just go somewhere else. Just go somewhere else, yeah. That was the attitude of the platforms. And of course now they all have creator payments organizations and teams and they're building all that stuff in the past. So maybe the first step was just like, hey, this is a problem. This is not fair for creative people. Creative people deserve to actually be paid for their work. They are creating value in the world. They are building communities. They are reaching people who love their work. It's it's not fair or good for society to not compensate those people for their labor. So kind of I guess realizing that, building that, getting that out step one. Maybe the next like important milestone was building you know turning that problem into like a professional membership suite because one of the things that we realize you know we realize. Probably early on, maybe 2017, somewhere around there, was there's this bifurcation of media on the web now. People are starting to— the web isn't just pure free anymore. Even Slate has a subscription offering, and different media companies have divided their offering into free and paid. That's not where the internet was in 2012. Everything was free. You know, everything was free back then. But now people are starting to realize like, wait, why am I, why should I give away everything? I should be paid for some of my work. And so we built this, you know, essentially this membership system that allowed people to section off a portion of their catalog and have a freemium offering and a premium offering. And that got really big with podcasters and video creators and a whole bunch of creators who were making episodic media and kind of building the CRM and the email system and the professional tool suite, the analytics analytics around that idea of this membership platform, I think was step 2. That sort of, you know, a lot of creators were able to build like really serious businesses at that point on Patreon. And that's why, you know, that's why now there are creators that are making $1 million a year on the platform. And your second question though, around like what's next?

Yeah.

In many ways, I think the journey of Patreon echoes the journey of media. And because essentially Patreon is like, we're serving small business media companies, right? Like that's what a creator is. It's a small business media company. They make things for the internet. And the challenge with that is the same challenge for media companies, same challenge for creators, same challenge for Patreon. Being downstream of Facebook and YouTube and TikTok is a perilous business for creators. It is a dangerous, difficult position to be in, to rely on those platforms for traffic, for community, for payments. You know, I won't go so far as to say it's a losing strategy because You still kind of need those companies. That's where the world is congregated. But I wish that weren't the case. It sucks being downstream of those platforms. It sucks for media companies. It sucks for creators. And it's bad for Patreon too. We don't want to be downstream of those companies. And so, you know, what's the future of Patreon? What's the future for creators on the platform? I want to be able to I wanna be able to have Patreon send those creators, send our creators traffic without needing it from Facebook and Instagram and YouTube. I think if we force creators to rely on those platforms, it's bad for them and it's bad for us. And so the next phase of the company is, you know, what you mentioned at the beginning of this show is Building a place where creators can not just get payments for their work, but they can actually get new audience as well.

I mean, you have lured some big names, Anne Helen Petersen, I believe Virginia Sol Smith too. Some people who have quite large followings have left other platforms and come to you. Why?

I think the real reason is because of our values. But I think, you know, we have a lot of the features that a lot of creators who are starting to realize, hey, I wanna build a business around my work. We have a lot of the features that those creators need to be successful.

Like what?

We've spent 13 years, everything from RSS syncing to analytics to free-to-paid conversion tools, to a really good CMS, to, you know, a CRM system, to collecting emails of all the people who follow you, to, you know, all that, to integrations across other platforms. Like we have that full suite of tools that creators need. But then I think from a value standpoint, we also, we also, one, do right by creators. And 2, I think just the way we handle things on the platform is different than how a lot of companies handle stuff on the platform. We have very specific opinions around what we don't, you know, want on Patreon, you know, and we act on that. So like we've taken certain posts down off of Patreon. And at times we've had to take creators down because they're outside of our content policy.

Yes.

I hate taking income away from people. I do not want to do that. And so we take those decisions very, very seriously. But if someone is spreading hatred and, you know, and is, you know, spreading Nazism and using Patreon to do that, I don't want that. Our team doesn't want that. You know, and we act on those decisions. I think a lot of other platforms don't.

I think people maybe said, oh, there are Nazis on Substack. I don't want that. I'm taking my stuff to Patreon.

I mean, I know that's happened. Yeah, absolutely. And I realize that's a very controversial thing to say right now because it's sort of in vogue in tech to not have trust and safety anymore. I disagree. I think it's important. I want Patreon to be a nicer place to hang out. I want it to feel safe. I want it to be a home for artists and creators. And And that means that we are like, we draw a hard line on those things. And I'm proud of those decisions.

Help me understand something about the new system, though, because if your new system is built on people kind of engaging more with their home feed, right? Doesn't that create an implicit pressure on creators to make more stuff, put more stuff up there, which is the opposite of being considered?

I don't think it has to do that. I think the current systems that exist have put that pressure on creators because they're trying to maximize for time spent. So I'll tell you exactly how it works.

Yeah.

Those systems say we need to maximize the amount of posts, maximize the length of those posts, and maximize the amount that creators can make those posts on the platform such that people log in every 20 minutes for new, more stuff and spend an extra 10 hours on the platform because every extra hour that people spend on those platforms is extra ad dollars for their business. That is not how Patreon's business model works. We don't get paid if you spend an extra 2 hours on the platform. In fact, Lizzie, if you ask me what is time spent on Patreon, what is the average time that a fan spends on Patreon? I don't know. We don't track it. It doesn't matter to me, and it doesn't matter our teams. That's what I mean by like, this is fundamentally a different system, and it has different incentives. And I think we should expect to see different, like, different things happening because of that.

I mean, I think what you're talking about here when we talk about kind of Web 2.0, right, is, is an internet built on advertising. Google and Facebook, Google and Meta are advertising companies. That, that is kind of the backbone of what they do. And what you are talking about is an internet that kind of got rid of ads, that wouldn't have ads. But I think a problem is that consumers also like that. They like being served the exact sweater that they're gonna wear because Instagram tracked enough third-party data about them that they're gonna serve them the sweater. Like, that seems like a really difficult tension in terms of growing audiences on a platform like Patreon.

If consumers like that, then they can go to Instagram. Yeah, I mean, I know I'm joking, but I'm serious.

But you're not.

Well, I don't— okay, so if consumers like that, if fans like that, fine. And maybe they'll use those platforms for that experience if that's what people want. But I think there's some things that you'll be able to get on Patreon that you won't be able to get on those other platforms. And I think it'll, I don't think it'll replace those platforms. I think people will still use the big social media sites, but I think on Patreon you'll get, I think what will end up happening because of the way we're running these systems, because of the incentive structures, because of what we're optimizing for, I think you'll get more intimacy, you'll get more vulnerability. It will feel like smaller, spaces. It will feel less like a big open public town square and more like, more, more like a, you know, a living room. I think it'll feel more open. I think it'll feel less trolly. I mean, not will feel, it already is feeling this. And the people that are using the product now are already saying this. So that's like, that's very intentional on our part. Like we want it to feel that way.

And I think we can continue to keep it feeling that way even as it scales.

Like, there's ways that we can create more of a niche feeling and niche communities, you know, in the product that doesn't just kind of feel like the free-for-all of social media.

Have you read Chris Hayes's book about attention, The Siren's Call?

No, I haven't.

'Cause it's a lot about this. It's the sort of constant, now I think, over the last 15 years, built-in need to check, to check, to check, and to have that awareness that the machine is always running. And if you just pick out the thing in your pocket, there'll be something to reward you.

There's an amazing—

And I wonder if we can disentangle that.

I think we can. And I think we need to. I think we have to, we gotta figure out a way to do that. And I think it's worth trying at the very least. I think we're gonna be able to do it.

Really?

I do, I do, because I remember when it didn't feel like this. I remember when there were hundreds of millions of people using these products and it didn't feel this bad. And I remember what the sort of catalyst was. I mean, actually, look, it, you know, when TikTok came onto the scene, Everybody thought like, oh, TikTok's innovation is this kind of swiping feed with vertical video. That was not their innovation. Their innovation was, you remember that thing you guys used to do called the follow? Forget about that. Don't worry about the follow. We're just gonna totally over-rotate toward novelty and we're just gonna fill your feed with With, with, with an insane amount of new things and none of the stuff from the people that you chose to form a long-term relationship with. So all these communities that you intentionally decided you wanna, you wanna be with, you wanna spend time with, all the people that you said like, gosh, I like this person. I like what they make. I like what they stand for. I want more of that. I wanna hang out with them. I wanna spend my time with them. All that stuff, forget about it. We're just gonna show you whatever. whatever addicts you to the phone. Once TikTok did that, here's what happened. It worked. It worked on us. We're fragile creatures with impulsive brains, unfortunately. I think we can overcome it, but it worked on us in the first wave. And so what did YouTube do? What did Instagram do? They just copied them. And now, no matter what system you log into now, it's the same innovation. It's that same over-rotation toward novelty fixation addiction. And like in a period of 4 or 5 years, it felt like every app I used and loved to build community and hang out with other creators and fans on the internet turned into this, turned into rocket fuel for my head. And it is that process that— And the end result, that is why we are here. It does not have to be that way. I don't think it does. I think people want and are starving for a deeper sense of connection right now, a deeper sense of real community and real conversation, real communication, real vulnerability. I think we're all feeling more and more like avatars on the web, and it's a bad feeling. I don't think that's the only way, and I think it's worth trying. I think it's worth trying. Is there a better system?

I mean, one of the things I hear you saying is that one of the ways to do that is to invest in content moderation in a way the rest of tech has basically said, like, yeah, no, we're not doing that anymore. Um, you've had some ups and downs with content moderation. You have banned some people. There were issues where people found CSAM on the platform. How do you think about moderating content in 2026? Like, what is the— Right amount?

So, there's a couple things that we consider when we're thinking about our content policies. And this is 13 years of iteration. And at the end of the day, content policy is a living, breathing document, right? It has to change and evolve at the pace of culture. And if it doesn't, then you end up with a content policy fire, and then you have to like take really fast action. So, part of what we're trying to do is always look ahead around the corner and always look ahead around like what's coming up and what do we need to do so that we're not in this like very reactive position 6 months from now. That's the first thing. Second thing is, what are the inputs that we use when we like make content policy decisions and build an actual content policy? And for us, there's a couple things. One is, we think about the mission of the company. What is our purpose on the planet? And how can a content policy reinforce that mission as opposed to fighting it? Second is just execution risk. And so, like, some things, like, you know, if you're working with payments partners and your policy is different than their policy, then, like, they'll complain and then they'll fine you. And so, there's just, like, certain things where we've got to make sure that, like, from an ecosystem perspective, we have a content policy that is, like, functional. It has to work. We have to be able to execute on that content policy. And then there's a third input, which is values. And that's like, what makes us sleep well at night and what makes us not sleep well at night? What do we stand behind? What's the type of change we want to see in the world? What's the type of stuff we want to host and distribute? And what's the kind of stuff we don't want to host and distribute? And that is an element. It's not all of our decisions. All of our decisions aren't based on that, but It is an important piece of it for me and for our team. And I think, yeah, my read is like a lot of tech has, seems like shifting values on that dimension. And yep. And yeah, I don't, That doesn't sit well with me. And I don't think it sits well with creators, which is why I think we've seen some creators leave some of these platforms and come to Patreon.

What about truth? Like, this is a difficult question because I see people who have built followings as creators who kind of cosplay being a journalist, and they might have a deep relationship with their fans, and they might have a very dedicated following. But, like, they're just out there putting stuff out that's wrong. Does that matter to you guys?

So, one of the things I always say with regard to content policy is, like, it's very hard to talk about content policy hypothetically. We do have, like, systems around, for instance, like, COVID misinformation. You know, when all that stuff started to pop up and there was, like, You know, there was stuff about vaccines, there's stuff about the COVID vaccine. We had labeling and categorization on the site. And so yes, we do think about that stuff, you know, quite a bit. But like opinion, you know, I want a variety of opinions on Patreon. There's some opinions I don't want on Patreon. And, you know, like, again, I already gave the example of like Nazism. But, but like, you know, we do want a diversity and variety of opinions on the platform. And then where you draw the line is, again, comes down to values, execution, mission.

Let's talk about AI because that, that is where I think a lot of these content moderation questions are going. You told Katie Drummond at Wired in an interview that you use ChatGPT, that you like were super into it, but that was a little while ago. That was like, 6 months ago. I'm curious what AI you use now.

I switched from ChatGPT to Claude when the whole DoD thing went down. It was surprisingly easy. I just asked ChatGPT to output text with everything that it knew about me. And I told it, I was like, be very specific and very detailed because I'm gonna take this, I'm gonna take your output and I'm gonna put it into Claude. So just like, Tell me everything you know. And it wrote me this big long document, and I downloaded it, and I uploaded it to Claude, and then I switched to Claude. And what do I use Claude for? I use it for like, it's been really good for health, actually, nutrition and health. Like, I'll ask it what's in a particular food, and if it's good for my LDL and stuff like that. It actually gives me good answers.

Is it right?

So I— because there are hallucinations and judgment issues, if it's like a serious thing, I almost always like check a second or third source. And actually, you know, one thing that I found is like, it often sounds very confident, and it can make you Stop relying on your own judgment, and so what I found is like useful is to not think of it as any sort of authority at all, but to think of it as one person's opinion. And then you know you can I use it as like a starting point, and then I'll look things up you know online after that. That's how I use it. And yeah, I I think it's. I think it's helpful. I like it. I mean, I, if I weren't so angry about how the tech has rolled out, I think I'd feel better about it. But the fact that, the fact that pretty much all of these companies have basically used the totality of creator-uploaded work without consent, without compensation, and without credit. I find really depressing. And I'm— yeah, it feels counterproductive to the reason I started Patreon.

It seems very counterproductive to your past as an artist.

It's— and I've looked up my stuff on those models, and they'll make a, you know, an image of Pomplamoose I used. I prompted Suno to make a song that sounded like my band and it did it. It was like spot on, sounded like my band. My band hasn't been paid for that work. We never gave our consent to have our music be uploaded into those models. It feels like starting over from zero. And I— But you're using it. Well, I use Instagram too, and I use YouTube too, and I pay my taxes, even though I disagree with a lot of what my federal government is doing. You know, I think, yeah, I think we, like, it's very, like, if you wanted to be totally pure, like, at this point, you'd have to check off the internet. Like, any website you use, any app you use is benefiting from LLMs at this point. Like, the code written in a lot of these apps is generated from LLMs. Like, we're all using AI at this point. And yes, I mean, I guess I think what you're sort of maybe insinuating that it's hypocritical of me to use Claude and to—

No, I'm not saying it's hypocritical. I'm just, I'm just like wondering how you, who have clearly thought about this a lot in terms of artist work and compensation, think through this very thorny problem.

Yeah. So there's another really important thing about it, which is, um, you know, if you look at like, if you look at this historically, right? Um, You know, the first commercially available synthesizer, the Novachord, which I think came out in the '30s. When that instrument came out, you know, the musicians union like immediately put a ban on it because they were afraid that it would replace orchestras. And like, you can look back at that and be like, ah, that's really silly. What a silly thing to do to ban the synthesizer. But guess what happened to orchestras over the next 100 years? Like in the '40s, you know, every single one of the top 10 songs on the radio was a recording of an orchestra. And now it's essentially zero. None of the top 10 songs are orchestras. And I mean, this is like a very sad, a very sad thing. And, you know, My favorite musicians use synthesizers. My favorite artists, Björk, Radiohead, you know, like, I'm not gonna lie, like, it is tension. I feel tension in that. I hate that orchestras have been through a financial crisis and have been in decline for the last 50 years. I hate that. I hate that thousands of people lost you know, lost their jobs as professional musicians when synchronized music and, and, you know, and picture came out with the Vitaphone, you know, when talkies first, you know, sort of came into being in the '20s. I hate that tens of thousands of musicians lost their jobs, but I love the sound effects in Star Wars, and I'm glad that there's like sound in movies, and I watch movies with sound. I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is like, I think you're right to point out the tension. And it does feel, maybe the reason I said hypocritical is because it does feel hypocritical. And this is the world that we live in. It's a hard place. Now, what's important for artists right now, and the reason I'm coming out and saying, I use these tools, I'm being very deliberate about that. And why am I doing that? For a couple reasons. One, this is one of those moments on the internet where I feel like the conversations I'm having in private with other artists are very different than the conversations I see happening online. Online, I see this very clear bifurcation and almost like a boycott of all AI tools. But when I talk to my creator friends, they're all using Claude or ChatGPT, or they're using Descript to edit their podcasts, or they're using AI tools to clean up audio and like everybody's using these tools in some capacity to help them. And so anytime I've felt that tension in the past where I'm like, these conversations in private are different than the conversations that are happening online, it makes me want to be one of the first people to just go out online and be like, hey, I'm just going to say what I'm seeing because something feels untrue right now. And I want to be like, I want to be I want to be a whole person. I don't want to be lying and hiding the fact that I use these tools, and I don't want artists to feel ashamed for using these tools. Okay, the second reason is because when the synthesizer came out in the '30s, when talkies came out in the '20s, I think it was very important for some artists to learn about those technologies and learn how those technologies could potentially be useful to them. I think right now it's important for artists to at least be curious about AI. I'm not saying use it all the time, but it's going to change how we make things. I'm not saying all art is going to be AI art and sloppy and gross. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying, I think it's gonna affect a lot of tools, processes, workflows, our craft. I think a lot of those things are gonna change. And I really don't want artists to feel like they're given this sort of polarity choice that we're seeing online, which is like, either you betray everyone you know and love by using these tools, or you get left behind and you can't— you know, make things anymore. That's a terrible choice to be faced with as an artist right now. And it's not true. I don't want creative people to feel that pressure. Like, you don't have to feel that pressure.

Does that, like, thinking, putting your tech CEO hat on, does that become a disclosure or labeling issue when someone is creating AI art or AI music? Like, I looked at your AI policies and they're, you know, mostly about nudity, sexual material, non-consensual stuff. And then I wonder, like, I don't, I don't have an answer for this, but I am curious, are we moving into a world where it should say, oh, this is a thing that I co-created along with this AI tool? Or do fans and audiences sit there and say, I don't know, how'd she do that?

This is something I'm thinking about a lot right now. It's not in the policy yet because it's really thorny. So let me give you some examples. And by the way, I'm posing a problem, not offering a solution, and it's our job to offer a solution and we will.

No, dude.

But like, we haven't yet. If a creator Makes a video and it's a great video and they used Claude to come up with some metaphors or do research. Is that, like, do we need to label that? Okay. What if they used Claude to write one paragraph in the script? What if they used, you know, a magic eraser tool in one of the frames to get, you know, to clean up an image? What if they used Descript to remove silences, you know, in the podcast or to add room tone? And then you can imagine a spectrum from like the most minor adjustments using AI tools to like, you know, pixel for pixel, you know, AI-created video. And the thing is, what I think I'm, you know, what I have realized and what I think a lot of people will start to realize is something is not AI art or not. There is a very broad, very wide spectrum of how much AI is being used here. What I don't want to do, and what's very important to me, is to not blanket prohibit or label anything where any creator used AI in any step of their workflow. I'll give you an example. There is an amazing artist I found recently. Oh, I forgot his name. Paul Flores. His name is Paul Flores. He made this amazing video with a team of people. It was like 15 animators or something like that. And they sketched out a bunch of original artwork, and then they uploaded that artwork to an AI 3D engine creation model. And it turned the artwork into a 3D model that they could rotate a camera around. And this music video is so cool. And they employed like 15 people in making it. Like, I'm not going to tell, you know, Paul, sorry, you can't upload that video to Patreon. That would be a terrible policy, right? So we have to be very thoughtful around, you know, how we label and how we define that kind of stuff. And that is exactly the, like, the stuff that the team is working on. It's, I think it's very important to be thoughtful about that.

You've been very gracious with your time. I just have a couple more questions for you. In your way of living, in your persona, in the work you do, you are in many ways a sort of anti-tech CEO, right? You're like a dad who wears a hat and, you know, makes music.

Yeah.

I wonder, though, if you have thought about how and why tech CEOs have become an avatar of so many things that people in this country are frustrated and angry and disgusted with. Like, why do we hate tech CEOs so much?

Um, I mean, a lot of people aim that at me too. I appreciate your dad in a hat comment, but I get plenty of, uh—

You do?

I'm quite personally familiar with that. Yeah, yeah, of course, of course I do. Um, uh, why, why do we hate tech CEOs? There are so many reasons. There's so many reasons. Um, maybe one main reason, and this is something I've learned, you know, in just going from YouTube creator to being in tech, um, which I was not something I expected or wanted. It's, it still feels like a, an odd turn in my life. Um, But people in tech think in a very different way than people, I think, in the rest of the world. And it often makes tech people seem just so fucking out of touch with how humans act and what humans want. And I think it stems from like a a different way of seeing the world, a different way of thinking about the world, a different way of kind of being in the world. Maybe that's one. 2 is maybe a more forgiving reason, although I don't mean to be forgiving of tech CEOs. But I think anytime you are making decisions at that scale, Like making decisions with billions of people, you're gonna just, yeah, you're gonna make decisions that hurt a lot of people. I think a really good example of this is like, I remember in 2018 when Facebook made a change to their algorithm, and then it was just like years of media layoffs. Like, I remember that. That's right, to everybody in the world. You look at that and you're like, this is fucking evil. How could you do this? And I think it's very hard for them to explain themselves in those moments for whatever reason. I mean, I could keep going. There's so many reasons people hate tech CEOs.

And yet you seem fundamentally optimistic that there is a way to make an internet that is better.

What are we gonna do? Let it be like this? What? I remember in 2013, I remember pitching Patreon to a bunch of people, pitching Patreon to investors, pitching Patreon to friends, and everybody was like, Jack, nobody's gonna pay for stuff that they can get for free on the internet. And like, you know, we have a long way to go. I'm not declaring victory. I don't want, you know, it's not an I told you so thing, but like, we've made it, we've made a difference, you know? We've sent $10 billion to creative people. That's $10 billion that would not be in the pockets of creative people Had we not been like, you know what, let's fucking try it. Let's try to make something better because I don't like the way this is going right now. And I have that same feeling now. I have that same feeling now. I don't like the way the internet is going. I don't like it as a creator. I don't like posting and having it feel like a slot machine. That fucking sucks. It shouldn't be like that for creative people and for their communities. And so I think it's worth trying something else. And there's gonna be a lot of people along the way who say, Jack, that's stupid. Jack, what are you doing? You can't win against TikTok. Jack, you're just copying social media. Jack, it's never gonna work. Fine. People can say that all day long. And I don't— sorry, Lizzie, it sounds like I'm throwing shade at you. I don't mean to be. I'm just saying— No, no, no. I'm used to skepticism about these things. And at the end of the day, like, if you're not gonna try, what are we doing? Like, may as well try.

Jack, thank you for your time. Thank you, Lizzie.