Crowdfunding: Is There Porn Of It?

For reasons that will be explained in a post appearing soon, I am looking into crowdfunding (preferably Patreon-style) in order to try and improve the depth and quality of posting here at ErosBlog. However, I am reluctant to use a crowdfunding platform that’s openly hostile to porn. There seems to be a crowdfunding-industry consensus around allowing adult projects (sort of) as long as they are not “pornography” or “sexually explicit”, leaving those terms undefined. The rules on all platforms currently seem to boil down to some version of “We’ll allow your adult project, but if it becomes contentious or attracts any sort of negative attention, we’re reserving the right to redefine whatever you’re doing as ‘porn’ and blow you off our platform while pretending you were never welcome in the first place.”

Trouble is, I’m proud of the fact that everything I do is porn, even if it’s also erotic art curation or forensic photoarcheology or deep-dive provenance research into viral photographs or reluctant investigative journalism and cynical commentary about platforms used by pornography enthusiasts. So I’m looking for a crowdfunding platform that won’t make me lie about what I love to do. I don’t doubt that with a bit of careful fancy-dancing I could use one of the porn-squeamish platforms, at least for awhile. But I would hate to get invested (or to get my patrons invested) in a platform where the official policy is to prohibit porn officially while tolerating it on a case-by-case basis as long as it doesn’t get too uppity.

Here are the results of my first round of quick research into the porn policies at a few of the most popular platforms that sometimes allow adult projects:

1. Patreon: “Patreon is not for pornography.”
   

   Patreon is not for pornography, but some of the world’s most beautiful and historically significant art often depicts nudity and sexual expression. Because of that, we allow nudity and suggestive imagery, as long as it is marked NSFW. If your work contains nudity or any material that could potentially be offensive to users, make absolutely sure to mark the page as NSFW in the creator description when creating your page. Think of the policy as allowing “R Rated” movies… but not porn.

2. Indiegogo: currently prohibits “sexually explicit” projects.
   

   Do not post images or videos that are sexually explicit or post links to sites that contain sexually explicit material.

3. Kickstarter: “We prohibit…pornographic material.”
4. Offbeatr: Closed 2/8/16. Sounds like #pornocalypse in action:
   

   We’d like to thank all our customers and users for supporting Offbeatr throughout our years but the website will be closing indefinitely due to changes in corporate structure.

So, what have I missed? Is there a single crowdfunding platform out there that is officially open to projects featuring pornography and sexually explicit material?

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Funding A Porn Movie On Indiegogo

The Sssh.com house blog Erotic Scribes posted an article last Thursday called The Challenges of Crowd Funding Porn Movies, which is most specifically about Shine Louise Houston’s effort to crowd-fund the making of Snapshot, a “sex-positive, queer porn production”. Erotic Scribes quotes Houston about the challenges of funding of the movie:

“As a smaller company working on the fringe of the adult industry, funding any project is a big concern. It’s a value of the company to produce our projects independently to keep full creative control over our work. But that stance poses some challenges.

…

That’s why we’ve taken the plunge into crowd funding. We’ve seen other campaigns on Kickstarter get pulled for being associated with the adult industry so we were very wary about heading a campaign of our own. We finally decided to go with Indiegogo and we were very upfront with them about being adult and asked them to review our campaign before it was launched. To our surprise we passed inspection. But two days into it our campaign was pulled, but not for reasons you would assume. Our raffle tickets in our VIP party perk were against their TOS. Who knew. Their explanation was that you can’t give a prize that is entrance into a contest. Fair enough. Since we pulled the raffle tickets it’s been smooth sailing… kind of.

It’s true that Indiegogo has always had the buzz of being slightly less porn-hostile than, say, Kickstarter, which flatly prohibits “pornographic material” in its TOS. But IG’s historical position on pornography projects can best be described as “muddled and squeamish”. Last year their Australian rep flat-out said for publication “We have some restrictions — we don’t allow fund-raising for pornography.” IG’s TOS don’t say anything specifically against porn, but the TOS do prohibit posting “links to sites that contain sexually explicit material.” (If you thought the Snapshot pitch by a maker of queer porn movies was oddly anodyne, sexless, and lacking in links to Houston’s work, that’s why.) One furry site exploring their adult crowdfunding options asked about Indiegogo’s porn policy and received this less-than-ringing endorsement from Indiegogo customer service back in 2013:

We are not completely opposed to adult content, but as our site is visible to minors, we require that all adult-themed campaigns be discrete. We do not allow nudity or other explicit or graphic content.

Now, in 2015, the word again is that Indigogo allows porn projects, as long the would-be producer can put together a funding pitch that doesn’t link to anything sexually explicit, like, say, the producer’s production studio and life’s work.

What about supporting Snapshot itself? In the abstract, I’d love to see the project get funded, because intelligent porn doesn’t get made via traditional funding models; we need functional new ones. But queer porn is way outside my usual line and I’m not at all familiar with Houston’s work. If it helps you decide, Violet Blue at Tiny Nibbles is an enthusiastic supporter of Shine Louise Houston and the Snapshot project; Violet says “I strongly recommend throwing even just $5 in the kitty.” So there you have it!

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