Patreon has ... a political bias, and that's not good for them
What makes you think that their bias is not good for them as a business? To me, it seems quite possible that were they to take the "principled" stance you advocate, they would soon find themselves facing much larger problems. Either their payment processors would cut them off, or they would face a larger and better organized boycott by those who prefer their current bias. Even if I'd prefer them to take a different stance for the long term benefit society, I don't see it helping them in the short term to do so.
> What makes you think that their bias is not good for them as a business?
Well it caused me to cancel all of my subscriptions. It caused Sam Harris to cancel his account. It caused a lot of people to look for alternatives. I'm pretty sure this decision hurt Patreon's bottom line.
> Either their payment processors would cut them off, or they would face a larger and better organized boycott by those who prefer their current bias.
I don't think that's true, at least not with most of the Patreon bans. Nobody was organizing a boycott of Patreon for this, and Patreon's blog post didn't say they were pressured by payment processors. Another example: When Cloudflare stopped hosting The Daily Stormer, it was because Cloudflare's CEO didn't like them claiming that Cloudflare was a secret supporter of their racist ideology. And today Cloudflare seems to have no trouble with payment processors or boycotts despite hosting the Westboro Baptist Church's website.[1]
Patreon would absolutely have rolled all this back already if it was up to them. It isn’t. The MasterCard Visa cartel can destroy their business tomorrow without recourse or appeal, just like they can Stripe or PayPal. When wannabe Patreon competitor SubscribeStar took on Carl Benjamin all eight of their payment processors dropped them. This is not a Patreon thing.
What makes you think that their bias is not good for them as a business? To me, it seems quite possible that were they to take the "principled" stance you advocate, they would soon find themselves facing much larger problems. Either their payment processors would cut them off, or they would face a larger and better organized boycott by those who prefer their current bias. Even if I'd prefer them to take a different stance for the long term benefit society, I don't see it helping them in the short term to do so.