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Regarding Gumroad, Patreon, & Paypal
2 years ago
General
I'll be posting a summary of what I said on Twitter here, along with more thoughts.
The tweets:
So, as many of you have probably figured, I had to delete my gumroad account today- meaning many of the exclusive content like comics/image packs are no longer accessible. I have a lot of thoughts on the current trend of paid platforms banning NSFW content. Its a joke for these credit card companies to conflate all sexual-platforms and services with potentially promoting illegal activities, all it does is reinforce puritanical, conservative values. Patreon is also making things more and more difficult for NSFW artists as of late. While I feel my Patreon content won't fall under the umbrella of bannable offenses, it's only a matter of time before they outright ban anthro porn. I'm going to hold strong and keep working, as it's how I make my livelihood, but this is extremely discouraging. In response to losing Gumroad as a platform, I will be uploading all of that content to my Nikko Patreon over the weekend under the $5 tier to try and recoup some of my lost revenue. I apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for always supporting me!
Additional thoughts:
Personally, this entire experience has just pissed me off. I had been debating making more Gumroad-Exclusive work precisely because of things like this, not to mention the large cut the website takes from my revenue. Every day, my options as a NSFW creator are becoming more and more limited. I can't share my Patreon updates on Twitter/X because they suppressed, even if I don't outright use the word "Patreon" or put links in another post. Patreon itself is tightening the noose on what's allowed- as we've seen with the recent wave of big artists being banned for drawing incest (which is a kink I don't personally agree with, but wouldn't try to cancel someone's career over) as well as other forms of censorship. Freedom of expression is something I highly value, and I don't want to see anyone's livelihoods be taken away because they choose to draw what they want to draw (as long as it isn't illegal, and even then it's still fantasy porn). I'm just one person in a sea of other creators screaming into the void, and I don't have as much reach as some of the others being affected by this, but we as a community need to come together to decide what to do about it, where we all agree to put our support instead, and if we should make our own platforms instead of relying on companies that don't have our best interests in mind.
Sorry for the long ramble, but this is the culmination of years of dealing with this shit from so many different sites. Paypal, Tumblr, Gumroad, Ko-Fi, Patreon, Twitter, and now Gumroad have shown where their priorities lie.
-Nikko
The tweets:
So, as many of you have probably figured, I had to delete my gumroad account today- meaning many of the exclusive content like comics/image packs are no longer accessible. I have a lot of thoughts on the current trend of paid platforms banning NSFW content. Its a joke for these credit card companies to conflate all sexual-platforms and services with potentially promoting illegal activities, all it does is reinforce puritanical, conservative values. Patreon is also making things more and more difficult for NSFW artists as of late. While I feel my Patreon content won't fall under the umbrella of bannable offenses, it's only a matter of time before they outright ban anthro porn. I'm going to hold strong and keep working, as it's how I make my livelihood, but this is extremely discouraging. In response to losing Gumroad as a platform, I will be uploading all of that content to my Nikko Patreon over the weekend under the $5 tier to try and recoup some of my lost revenue. I apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for always supporting me!
Additional thoughts:
Personally, this entire experience has just pissed me off. I had been debating making more Gumroad-Exclusive work precisely because of things like this, not to mention the large cut the website takes from my revenue. Every day, my options as a NSFW creator are becoming more and more limited. I can't share my Patreon updates on Twitter/X because they suppressed, even if I don't outright use the word "Patreon" or put links in another post. Patreon itself is tightening the noose on what's allowed- as we've seen with the recent wave of big artists being banned for drawing incest (which is a kink I don't personally agree with, but wouldn't try to cancel someone's career over) as well as other forms of censorship. Freedom of expression is something I highly value, and I don't want to see anyone's livelihoods be taken away because they choose to draw what they want to draw (as long as it isn't illegal, and even then it's still fantasy porn). I'm just one person in a sea of other creators screaming into the void, and I don't have as much reach as some of the others being affected by this, but we as a community need to come together to decide what to do about it, where we all agree to put our support instead, and if we should make our own platforms instead of relying on companies that don't have our best interests in mind.
Sorry for the long ramble, but this is the culmination of years of dealing with this shit from so many different sites. Paypal, Tumblr, Gumroad, Ko-Fi, Patreon, Twitter, and now Gumroad have shown where their priorities lie.
-Nikko
I'd say we just need some alternatives but apparently Stripe changed their policy on the matter as well. So I'll need to look into that. In my opinion we need legislation that strips payment processors of this right and regulates them as a public utility given their critical nature to commerce today but in all honesty here both sides politically are perfectly fine with things they object to being banned for purchase so it will never happen.
But yeah really, I hope things work out for you - and for other NSFW artists making a living on their work, too.
The market is there, for them its like either them take the money and run the market, or someone else would build a similar platform to take over.
Sorry this happened.