“No active subscription”

[da2x]

Environment

• Flattr version: 0.6.0.9
• Browser name and version: Firefox 61.0
• OS name and version: Fedora 28

Description
The extension have complained a few times over the last few days that I don’t have an active subscription. I do have an active subscription, however.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open the extension pop-out.

Observed behavior
“No active subscription”. I’ve never seen this before a few days ago.

Expected behavior
No complaints as I do have an active subscription and the message goes away when I reopen the pop-out.

[ThomasGreiner]

Thanks for reporting this. Since I'm not encountering this issue on my end, I'm not yet sure what's causing this behavior so mind checking the following?

• Do your flattrs show up in the dashboard on flattr.com or are some of them missing? (specifically the ones that were created right before the message appears)
• Which errors do you see in the window that opens when you go to about:debugging and click on "Debug" for the extension's entry?
• Did you make any changes to your Flattr account before this issue first occurred? (e.g. changed your payment information)

I can then try to track down the issue to find out more. After all it could very well be a server-side issue since the extension should only show this message when the server notifies it that there's no active subscription.

[da2x]

I suspect this is a server issue as it only started happening a few days ago. could be an error with how the extension handles error messages or network failure conditions, though.

[ThomasGreiner]

I have now heard of others experiencing issues with their subscription so it doesn't appear to be an isolated case. Our payment provider is currently looking into the matter.

[da2x]

My subscription did actually stop working recently. Like, a week ago so a week after this issue was reported. I haven’t bothered re-starting the subscription (too little Flattr’able content/few supported websites), but I didn’t actively go in and stop the subscription myself and the associated credit card is fine.

[ThomasGreiner]

We have now heard back from our payment provider and they have told us that payments should be working again.

Regarding Flattr usage, I can say that we do see a steady increase in creators signing up for Flattr and we are also experimenting with more ways to flattr content (e.g. flattr.com/labs) to help attract content creators to the platform. We are also seeing a similar increase in the amount of flattrs that creators receive.
But you're right, in the end it all depends on how much people like and believe in the idea of giving money to all creators and not just some large ones. For that, word of mouth can be very powerful in spreading the message.

[da2x]

I’ve contacted probably 50–60 creators and websites asking them to please accept my money via Flattr. Conversion rate is exactly 0 %. I’ve already setup auto-Flattr’ing of YouTube videos, but only one of my 23 subscriptions accept Flattrs (and 0 % of the others have signed up after I contacted them about Flattr). So I’ve tried to make Flattr make sense for me, but it seems the creators and publishers I care about don’t care about Flattr (or money). Interestingly, there is a much greater number of publishers I frequent who’ve signed up for the crazy crypto-nonsense offered by Brave.

Any change you guys could setup flattr.com/publisher/example.com; a landing page for publishes so they can see some statistics about how many Flattrs they receive and how many Flattr users visit their site in the last few months. It would be easier to convince publishers about the value of Flattr if they could get some data. (Data could include average number of Flattrs per week in the last three months, average number of Flattr-ers in the same period, and the value of these Flattrs based on the mean-value of one Flattr in the same time periods.) It would bring transparency to how Flattr works and how much money is going through the system, and also make it easier to convince publishers (and users!) to sit up and pay attention. Registered publishers probably want the option to make that page/information private, though.

[ThomasGreiner]

I really appreciate your help and it's indeed quite difficult to convince creators to receive free money.

I've also forwarded your idea about setting up a landing page to the flattr.com team. My first impression is that this could be doable if we can set it up in a privacy-friendly way so thank you very much for sharing.

[da2x]

I really appreciate your help and it's indeed quite difficult to convince creators to receive free money.

Surprisingly so.

I've also forwarded your idea about setting up a landing page to the flattr.com team. My first impression is that this could be doable if we can set it up in a privacy-friendly way so thank you very much for sharing.

The data I suggested is all aggregate data; data derived from other data. Play-acting JSON to visualize the data here, but {site:'example.com', date:'2018-07', flattrs:150, users:60} + {date:'2018-07', amount:1, currency:'usd', meanvalue:0.271}. There arent’t any privacy concerns around sharing any of these data publicly as there is no personal data involved. Even if only a single Flattr user visited example.net, there shouldn’t be any privacy concerns* around sharing the numbers as its not associated with any one user. (*Except if you’re the NSA and monitoring all internet activity on the planet, but then you’d already know that UserX uses Flattr and you’d already know they’d visited example.net.)

Flattr already have an “approved lists” for high-quality websites (which could be supplemented with websites/creators that have received Flattrs from more than X number of users.). You already have all the pieces and data to build this.

I’m sure it would be easier to convince example.com to sign-up if they could see that people are using Flattr, visiting their website, and are actively trying to give them real money.

This could probably be setup for flattr.com/youtube/examplechannel and other platforms too, but there might be API restrictions or whatnot that come into play with these platforms.

[da2x]

Just saw a “No active subscription” message in the extension again. Should be funded for another month through account credit, however. I don’t see any notices like this on the website nor in the extension now.