Important Updates, Apologies, & Patreon Security Concerns

Hey everyone, Henry 👋

This is a long overdue PSA, and I'm sorry for how long it’s taken me to catch up with communication.

First, I want to apologize for how poorly we’ve been maintaining our Patreon. We’ve been inconsistent in delivering your perks, as well as taking an embarrassing amount of time responding to messages. I’m genuinely impressed there are so many of you still here after what I consider to be a neglectful experience to you all.

With that said, I want to assure you we’re committed to earning your trust back. We simply cannot have Techlore function the way it does without you – and we need to do a better job of acknowledging that with our time & energy. You’ll start seeing more frequent posts again, as well as some other things I’ve been wanting to deliver to patrons for a long time, so keep your notifications on to catch them! You are all the reason we’re able to maintain so much independence in our content!

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I also wanted to acknowledge Patreon security concerns. For those who didn’t hear, Patreon let go much (if not all) of their dedicated security team. They are trying to assure us that this is part of their strategy to still maintain security (via other unclear methods) – the reality is we simply don’t know what this means. This article is probably the most balanced & nuanced take I could find regarding Patreon that I encourage everyone reads! In short, I don’t think Patreon is inherently doomed to be an insecure platform, but it’s incredibly important for us to be vigilant and proceed with caution.

With this being said, it’s the perfect opportunity to remind you we have many other support methods (both free and paid) for those of you who don’t intend to continue using Patreon. Specifically, we recommend Monero for those needing the absolute highest degrees of safety. We will still be delivering our perks via Patreon for the foreseeable future, but we are watching this unfold and are at least considering some other platform options if Patreon continues to go downhill.

If anyone has questions, feel free to leave them below or send us a Patreon DM. Thanks again for your patience, and stay safe out there!

-Henry

Edit:

I forgot to mention an important update, yesterday I enabled Patreon's new feature to charge new patrons on the day they join and maintain *that* as their monthly subscription, rather than the first of the month. Hopefully this should make things easier for all of you.