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Patreon's New Anti-Porn Rules
By Kasaix • 6 years ago

Obey, Or We'll Call The Cops

(Patreon Banner from Lily Mechanic of YouTube)

Patreon was founded in May 2013 by artist Jack Conte, who was looking for a way to make a living from his popular YouTube videos. Together with Sam Yam he developed a platform that allows patrons to pay a set amount of money every time an artist creates a work of art; kind of like a subscription-based Kickstarter. Since then, Patreon is used by 50,000 active creators, 1 million monthly patrons, and was on track to send over $150 million to creators in 2017. The likes of Philip DeFranco, Mike Inel, and Sakimi Chan rely on Patreon for a sustainable living. It's understandable that Patreon would want to establish rules for how its site is used, however the new rules Patreon has put in place go quite a bit against adult content creators. This is nothing new for the porn industry in America, where porn-producers are persona non grata in almost all banks and financial instutions. Visa and MasterCard classify all adult-transactions as 'high risk' activity, placing a long list of extra rules on them and charging them much higher transaction fees than standard merchants (15% for adult merchants VS 3% for regular merchants)

Let's break down the key parts that affect hentai content creators here:

 

"We ask creators to flag themselves as Adult Content if they create any content that has mature themes such as sexuality or graphic violence. When you are flagged as Adult Content your page is removed from our search. We also require that all public content on your page be appropriate for all audiences. Content with mature themes must be marked as a patron-only post."

 So, Sakimi Chan isn't showing up in searches anymore, and no more freebies.

 

"We have zero tolerance when it comes to the glorification of sexual violence(...). This is true for illustrated, animated, or any other type of content. Patreon reserves the right to review and remove accounts that may violate this guideline. As a strong commitment to child safety, we will work with law enforcement whenever we come across child exploitation."

They were winning me over on this one. Glorification of sexual violence has no place in a civilized society, and those who commit it should be punished severely. Rules or general public opinion on such content would have forced Patreon's hand here.

 

"We also do not allow other fringe sexual fetish content, such as incest, necrophilia, or fetish content that is hard to distinguish from non-consensual sex."

 It's weird they mention incest and necrophilia in the same line as forced. Incest isn't automatically forced, and if you know what necrophilia is, it's more desecration than anything. Unless it has zombies.

 

"We understand that some topics on this list such as incest [...] are a little bit more complicated because these situations are, unfortunately, part of real life."

They have a weird hang-up on incest, don't they? It happens, there's laws on books, but it does happen and it doesn't mean it's all forced. It happens, and yes, from one family member to another, but second cousins can legally marry and have happy lives.

 

"As a result, when reviewing this type of content, the Trust and Safety team will take into consideration context including personal, historical or educational narrative. For example, survivor stories or fiction such as Game of Thrones or Lolita are allowed on Patreon."

Game of Thrones has everything they argue against and they're fine with it on the site. They could have chosen any other fiction piece with sex and violence, and they went right for the most extreme example.

 

"Lastly, you cannot sell pornographic material or arrange sexual service(s) as a reward for your patrons. We define pornographic material as real people engaging in sexual acts such as masturbation or sexual intercourse on camera. You can’t use Patreon to raise funds in order to produce pornographic material such as maintaining a website, funding the production of movies, or providing a private webcam session."

I'm actually not certain if actual real-life sex acts were ever shown on Patreon. I know there's plenty of lewd cosplayers on Patreon, but I don't think they have sex shows. I've also never heard of prostitutes crowdfunding.

 

There's been some talk of mass suspenstions of accounts due to these new guidelines, and it's not being done evenly. The likes of Mantis-X, LewdLab, PestilenceSFM and noname55 and others saw their accounts suspended,  though oddly enough, others were seemingly unaffected such as Studio Fow and Zone. Now we just need someone with a fancy title like "Head of Legal" to convince us that everything is cool and not at all like YouTube. Here's Colin Sullivan to fit the bill.

 

“As part of updating the Community Guidelines, we’re taking a clearer stance on some fringe areas of Adult Content.

Over the past few months, there’s been a lot of discussion among our Trust and Safety team about how we can better articulate how we evaluate certain areas of content.

It became evident that we needed to outline a clearer stance on some fringe adult content.

With today’s update, we’re also being more clear about specific categories of fictional erotic content that Patreon cannot be used to support (including incest, bestiality, sexual depiction of minors, and suggestive sexual violence).

We want to be clear that this stronger stance on fringe content has surfaced a small number of creators that need to update their pages. And that’s where the next update on our Trust and Safety commitments comes in.

We have implemented a better process for warning and guiding affected creators and content.

We think it’s important for all creators to have a second chance, so a lot of these updates have been focused on appeal and reinstatement.

In addition, all communications with creators include a chance for appeal. Some key parts of this update include:

Whenever possible, we’ll give creators a chance to change their Patreon page to bring the content back within the Community Guidelines.

Aside from blatant violations of Community Guidelines (such as hosting terrorist content, doxing, or very clear hate speech), removing a Patreon page completely is a last resort after we’ve offered a chance to update the content.

Creators will receive one-on-one guidance from a Trust and Safety Representative regarding the changes they need to make to reinstate their page.

While creators are making changes, their Patreon page will be suspended but not deleted.

Pledges will be paused and patrons will not be charged again until the page is reinstated.”

 

Like YouTube before it, this is all to cover their own hides and protect their image. I doubt they could care less about what other people fap too, as long as it's not being funded on their site. Content creators can't show off anything that could run afoul of these new rules, or link to outside sources that host them. Loli can't even be mentioned by name. This has made some suspect that it is only the Patreon accounts themselves that need to be voided of any and all “offensive content”, as opposed to the games or animations directly, although linking to them is apparently banned all the same.

What do you think about these new guidelines? Do they go too far, or not far enough? Tell us in the comments below.