Hey, everybody, just a quick reminder that it’s the final day of the month, so if you’ve been telling yourself that you want to adjust your Patreon pledges or add somebody, today is a very good day to do it!
Also I’ve been seeing a lot of folks make a point on Twitter that I think needs reinforcing: please never be ashamed to make a one or two dollar pledge! Yes, Patreon tried to shit all over these with a fee structure change not so long ago; yes, they had to backtrack after mass outrage. No, most of us never regained all the Patrons who cancelled their dollar pledges during that fiasco. But that’s really a side issue. Lots of folks seem to think a dollar pledge isn’t valued or appreciated like higher-dollar pledges. Nothing could be further from the truth! Bigger pledges come and go, but the little pledges are the reliable applause that makes creators feel supported and appreciated. My Patreon doesn’t have a lot of flashy rewards anyway; small pledges parse as authentic support for what I’m doing, whereas large ones can make me feel like I should be doing even more for my Patrons. It’s all to the good, but I just want to be crystal clear that pledges of any size are valued and honored. As always, thank you for your support!
Credit: The image at the top of this post is taken from an illustration in an 1895 newspaper reporting on blizzard relief for hard-hit counties in Kansas and Nebraska.
I woke up this morning to unwelcome news on Twitter. A few days ago, Patreon quietly (which means, without actually notifying the people who use its platform) updated the Adult Content portion of its Community Guidelines in an unequivocally porn-hostile way:
This is a substantial change after a long period of stasis. As recently as September, Patreon had not changed these guidelines since I analyzed them in detail back in 2016, when I was still agonizing over whether to solicit pledges on a platform that was then explicitly “not for porn” but which advertised its openness to “adult content” and promised to clarify the distinction in future policy updates. As I explained then:
I’ll admit I’m of two minds. I’m so offended by undefined “no porn” policies that I want to piss on the toes of every company that trots one out. But I also find myself tempted to give Patreon the benefit of the doubt just now. It’s possible they’re doing the best they can for adult content creators, in the context of a business/financial environment that is implacably hostile to us.
Notice two things. First, there are no reports going around that anybody has been kicked off of Patreon, had their money held, or suffered any adverse consequence of the new guidelines. Yet. So if this truly be #pornocalypse come to Patreon, it’s the sound of the hoofbeats in advance of the dread horseman, not the horseman himself.
The second thing I would have you notice requires your keen focus on the true meaning of #pornocalypse, which is a word that everyone, including me, throws around very loosely. But in its most precise usage, #pornocalypse is a financial term. It refers to that precise moment in an internet company’s business life-cycle where the business value of having “adult” content on the platform (popularity, users, traffic, coolness, network effects, buzz, et cetera) is suddenly outweighed by the detriment to the company of having to justify the presence of that adult content to bankers, stockbrokers, and venture capitalists. These financial-industry people are universally conservative to the point of squeamishness about sexual content in the businesses touched by their money, no matter how libertine they are in their personal lives. And so the pornocalypse always comes, as predictable as clockwork, to an internet company that’s going through a significant financial transition.
Hmmm, didn’t I recently get a bland email from Patreon about exciting developments, something about sixty million in new venture capital? Sure enough I did…
So yes. The way this works is that Patreon cannot afford to have anything in its system that might offend any of its new financial overlords. The new guidelines may or may not be followed up with new hires whose job is to go through and start throwing indy porn projects out of the system; let’s hope not. Best case is that the guidelines are to make things clear-cut so that when some indy porn site gets a bit of press buzz and the headline “Patreon-supported Porn Site Blah Blah Blah” starts trending in the business press, Patreon’s managers will have clear cause to nuke that unfortunate site from the system before Patreon’s venture capitalist backers can get on the phone to complain about reputation damage.
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.
I have contacts in the Bay Area. Through one of them, I heard a sort of personal rumor that the Patreon team was committed to trying to make the platform work for adult content creators. I knew it wouldn’t survive the first big financial phase change, but what the hell; I decided to get down off my high horse and give them a shot. And so, I set up my Patreon to emphasize my digital curation and provenance work with vintage erotic art, which should be equally fine under the new wording or the old. But I’ll probably want to revise the pitch a bit to put less focus on supporting this blog, which is still a porn website in my own eyes if (perhaps) not the kind of pornographic material production that Patreon is newly prohibiting. Who knows? It’s not like any of us will get a chance to lawyerlips our way out of a ban anyway; when the #pornocalypse comes for you, there’s usually no appeal. So be careful out there, people!
Although I skipped a couple of weeks due to a complicated holiday schedule and because I was busy setting up my own Patreon, it’s now time for the newest thrilling episode of Patronize This!
Today I’m featuring three people who are supported on Patreon by people who also support ErosBlog, although I won’t lie to you: I picked one of them mostly on the strength of her “I Dream Of Genie” avatar. (And, her Patreon video made me laugh.) Aside from that, though, I’m letting the artists do their own talking:
a light-hearted, humorous, sex positive educational weekly webcomic that covers a wide spectrum of the sex world; from sex toy reviews to sex education to interviews with sex industry professionals and more.
Nesoun draws “erotic sensual stuffs” and “your favorite characters in sensual manner.” Yup!
Enjoy!
Image Credit (directly above): Movie patrons in an advertisement for the National Cash Register Company’s new ticket-printing register, from the Motion Picture Studio Directory and Trade Annual 1916.
The theme for this week’s episode of Patronize This! is deserving erotic artists. I’ve got three quirky favorites who could all use your support. As is my intent throughout the remainder of this series (I completely blew it the first time out), I’ll eschew lengthy introductions, and let a sample of each artist’s work do most of the talking:
These invertebrate rascals work their way through the plumbing while you’re blissfully unaware in the shower. When the time’s right, they first pounce to try and restrain you, then stick their long, slick ovipositors inside any of your suitably-sized orifices. Not long after, you get to become the mommy of your own litter of adorable little baby beasties!
Image Credit (directly above): Movie patrons in an advertisement for the National Cash Register Company’s new ticket-printing register, from the Motion Picture Studio Directory and Trade Annual 1916.
Image Credit (top of post): Bohemian patrons as seen in the illuminated manuscript De Civitate Dei by Augustinus, via the Wikimedia Commons.
There is news today that Patreon has liberalized (a little bit) its stance on what it used to call “NSFW” and now calls “Adult Content”. An article by Lux Alptraum on Motherboard somewhat oversells the news with the misleading headline “Patreon Ends Payments Discrimination Against Adult Content”. Unfortunately the headline doesn’t mean what you’d think it means, because “Adult Content” in this context is a Patreon term of art that (a) Patreon refuses to or is unable to define; and that (b) explicitly excludes “porn” (again not defined). Nonetheless; there is actual good news in the story, and what appears to be real progress on the payments front for adult creators.
Last week [Patreon] sent out an email announcing a couple of changes for its more risque creators. Most notably, creators operating under the “adult content” banner on Patreon can now accept payments through PayPal (or, more accurately, its subsidiary Braintree).
There are a lot of reasons to feel excited about this. For one thing, it straight up makes things easier for Patreon’s Adult Content creators. Until now, Adult Content creators could only accept payments through credit cards, while other types of creators have had PayPal as an additional option for backers. Now, there’s no difference between Adult Content creators and other creators when it comes to payment processing options (though Patreon does distinguish between the two camps in other ways; Adult Content accounts aren’t discoverable through the site’s search function).
According to the Patreon email, the company went aggressively to the mat with the PayPal people, and succussfully argued that these transactions are not any higher-risk than Patreon’s other business:
For creators that have been with us for a while, you may remember that we used to allow this functionality in the past, and we only removed it after PayPal threatened to stop all payments to Patreon. Unfortunately, this is a common issue in the payments industry, both because payments for adult content are subject to a higher rate of chargebacks, and because of an aversion to the content itself among some payment processors.
After many long discussions we were able to convince PayPal, or more specifically their subsidiary Braintree, that Adult Content creators on Patreon are not a serious risk. Our content policy, and the nature of subscription payments, means that Adult Content creators on Patreon are less risky than most creators making adult content. We also have a very diverse mix of content types, so even if our Adult Content creators are higher risk than other types of creators, Patreon as a whole is less risky.
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.”
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.
Their email from last week says:
We are also continuing to clarify what content is acceptable when flagged as Adult Content and what content is not allowed on Patreon.
However, Patreon’s new clarity has not reached the policy, which is word-for-word identical to the old policy except for the change from “NSFW” to “Adult Content”:
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 as Adult Content. If your work contains nudity or any material that could potentially be offensive to users, make absolutely sure to mark the page as Adult Content in the creator description when creating your page. Think of the policy as allowing “R Rated” movies… but not porn.
So where does that leave people with adult projects who want to use Patreon? Pretty much in the same place they were before: don’t call it porn, and hope nobody complains. Or as Lux Alptraum puts it:
So where does this all leave indie smut creators? Only time will tell, but for now a bit of cautious optimism seems in order. Adult themed comics like Erika Moen’s Oh Joy Sex Toy would seem to be completely in the clear; as are art nudes and dirty minded podcasts. But people who want to photo and video document actual people fucking? Well, that might come down to the age old question of “art” versus “porn.”
Back in May I wrote that I was reluctant to use a platform that makes me lie about what I do, which I conceptuallize as “porn, or I’m doing it wrong.”
I’m proud of the fact that everything I do is porn, even if it’s alsoerotic 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.
And that’s why I’m torn about the news from Patreon. On the one hand, they still prohibit porn while refusing to say what they mean by that. On the other hand, they have promised greater clarity to come, and it’s clear that they actually went to bat with the payment providers in order to improve their platform for adult content creaters. Is it still fair for cynical me (who sees #pornocalypse under every rock) to call Patreon a “porn-squeamish” platform? Or should we credit them for taking this fight to the payment processors, and give them a free pass (until they abuse it) about maintaining a squishy “no porn” policy, especially if that squishy policy may have helped them in winning some very real progress with PayPal/Braintree?
I’ll admit I’m of two minds. I’m so offended by undefined “no porn” policies that I want to piss on the toes of every company that trots one out. But I also find myself tempted to give Patreon the benefit of the doubt just now. It’s possible they’re doing the best they can for adult content creators, in the context of a business/financial environment that is implacably hostile to us.
