Peterson earns a few hundred thousand dollars a month, of which Patreon is a small amount, which his move to alternatives and self hosting reduces the high Patreon fees increasing revenue. Patrons tend to move their support to different platforms, rather than dropping it.
There are plenty of existing free speech alternatives to Patreon, that he has not opted for, as it seems he didn’t drop Patreon (or announce an alternative) to support free speech — as his alternatives do nothing to address the censorship issue at all (payment processor censorship, compute & hosting censorship, domain censorship) and he himself has a history of deplatforming those which association can hurt his public image (he wouldn’t share a stage with Faith Goldy as she was “a property too hot to handle”, so why would he share a liberty patron service like BitPatron, Collide, BitBacker, with such hot properties) — his approach only seems a tactic to ride the hype into reduced fees and more control of public image.
Furthermore, Peterson is now running quite the family affair. His wife is his personal assistant, having access to previous clinical emails. His son (having done only a single web development bootcamp with only a sliver of open-source contributions) is his (a?) web developer for his businesses (something Peterson’s companies don’t mention, yet it is on his son’s resume).
Sources:
A listing of current alternatives that are tackling his proclaimed requirements:
The ineptitude of his alternative at achieving his proclaimed requirements:
How much Peterson earns:
His wife managing his email:
His son being his web developer:
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/julianpeterson1
Yet with no significant open source contributions:
And not listed on any of Peteron’s companies team pages:
https://www.understandmyself.com/team
https://www.selfauthoring.com/about
