Vimeo is telling creators to suddenly pay thousands of dollars or leave the platform

Lois van Baarle, a digital artist based in the Netherlands, joined Vimeo 13 years ago as a student studying animation, back when it was still an indie creator platform. When van Baarle started making subscriber-only Patreon content in 2020, Vimeo seemed like the best option for hosting her videos — Patreon itself didn’t offer video hosting, and YouTube didn’t have the same features to protect her work, like controlling where her videos could be embedded.

“I was already paying $200 a year, which I think is pretty expensive,” van Baarle says. “But I thought, well, it’s a quality platform.” She’s uploaded 117 subscriber-only videos so far, and each one only gets around 150 views on average, van Baarle says. Her most viewed video has around...

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