Pledgebot Update (Patreon)

The first:

I have finally received a response from Patreon abut the bot situation.

My original message to them:

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When will Patreon be taking steps to combat the rising tide of bot-created accounts making phony pledges?

It seems that these bot accounts have hit pretty much everyone that I

know who has a Patreon set up. My own has about $90 worth of fake

pledges now.

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The response:

Very soon!!

Other than a ban feature, we're working on a new payment system that will

charge all patrons immediately the first time they pledge to you, which

should help with this issue.

In the meantime, you can manually delete patrons via the Patron Manager.

Within the Patron Manager, you can simply check the box next to the

patron's name and hit the red "delete patron" button at the top.

Here are a couple other ways you can protect yourself from these patrons:

-Add fine print to your reward descriptions that states you only give rewards to patrons whose pledges have processed.
-Avoid sharing rewards in posts.

I hope this helps even a little but please don't hesitate to reach out

with any other concerns, questions, or otherwise. I'm here for you!

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So, that's good news. I'm hoping it gets set up soon. I suggested that patrons be also locked out of the gallery until that sign-up payment is confirmed.

Second:

In the interim, I've added a new top pledge level to the group, at $9,696 - and put a notation on it that this level is there to trip up the pledgebot (assuming it is an automated system, that just robotically signs up to whatever the top tier level is)

That should make it easy to spot the fakes. Hopefully.