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Patreon suspended // Thoughts
7 years ago
Hey folks! I'm sharing my experience in order to give you a clear vision of what is happening over Patreon. The game is changing fast: this is what happened to me in the past few days.
On May 3rd my Patreon channel got temporarily suspended, suddenly and without any preliminary notification of sort. The same day I received an email from the Trust & Safety team of Patreon, specifically from Fred (fictional name or not, it's signed so), and this is literally the message I got:
Your account has been suspended for violating our Community Guidelines.
Patreon has zero tolerance for the glorification of sexual violence, and this includes depictions of non-consensual sex, bestiality, incest, and sexualized depictions of minors.
This type of content can’t be funded by or linked to or from your Patreon page in any way, nor can it be offered as a reward to patrons.
In order to reactivate your creator page, you need to remove any content that references or depicts non-consensual sex, and de-link any spaces where you share this type of content from your Patreon.
You also cannot have any adult content or nudity present or linked to in any public part of your Patreon page, even if your page is marked as 'adult content'. You must change all public posts with nudity or adult content to "Patron-Only".
It appears I've broken two different levels of rules: a mild one, about Adult contents to be publicly visible on my profile, and a very despicable one about the glorification of sexual violence, and this includes depictions of non-consensual sex, bestiality, incest, and sexualized depictions of minors.
Of course, it depends on the local legislation where the servers are hosted (California, specifically), and I can imagine this measurements - as harsh as they are - are only meant to protect themselves from the possible laws infrangements.
In all honesty, though, this is ridiculous and it sounds like a crusade. There's absolutely no distinction in those forbidden contents categories between real VS fictional contents. There's no distinction between reality VS imagination. Also, there's absolutely no distinction on topics like porn VS artictic nude.
This sexophobia strikes me deeply and, as a LGBTQ* activist and a firm believer in freedom of expressions - especially artistic ones - I am disgusted. The lack of attention Patreon Staff is showing is not only making me lose time and money, but also making me feel inappropriate, sick, shameful. I absolutely cannot get over this and I will take actions against this.
What will I do? Of course my first action needed is to unblock my Patreon profile, in order to fix every possible problem with payments, tiers or whatsoever. In fact, my Patreon page is currently under review procedure and 90% of the contents have been already relabeled "Patrons only" or deleted. Secondly, I'm gonna hopefully gather my payouts for May (payday should be today, in fact) and this will be the last month keeping same tiers and rewards. From June, my Patreon channel will have no Tiers, no Rewards, and will probably be dismantled.
I'll keep you all posted about this and I'm also taking the chance to thank in public all my Patrons, my beloved supporters, all of you: this is what Patreon was good about. It has been great to know so many people around, from different country and age and sexuality, gathered around to support myself and my art. Thank you! This is, hopefully, a see you and not a goodbye ;)
On May 3rd my Patreon channel got temporarily suspended, suddenly and without any preliminary notification of sort. The same day I received an email from the Trust & Safety team of Patreon, specifically from Fred (fictional name or not, it's signed so), and this is literally the message I got:
Your account has been suspended for violating our Community Guidelines.
Patreon has zero tolerance for the glorification of sexual violence, and this includes depictions of non-consensual sex, bestiality, incest, and sexualized depictions of minors.
This type of content can’t be funded by or linked to or from your Patreon page in any way, nor can it be offered as a reward to patrons.
In order to reactivate your creator page, you need to remove any content that references or depicts non-consensual sex, and de-link any spaces where you share this type of content from your Patreon.
You also cannot have any adult content or nudity present or linked to in any public part of your Patreon page, even if your page is marked as 'adult content'. You must change all public posts with nudity or adult content to "Patron-Only".
It appears I've broken two different levels of rules: a mild one, about Adult contents to be publicly visible on my profile, and a very despicable one about the glorification of sexual violence, and this includes depictions of non-consensual sex, bestiality, incest, and sexualized depictions of minors.
Of course, it depends on the local legislation where the servers are hosted (California, specifically), and I can imagine this measurements - as harsh as they are - are only meant to protect themselves from the possible laws infrangements.
In all honesty, though, this is ridiculous and it sounds like a crusade. There's absolutely no distinction in those forbidden contents categories between real VS fictional contents. There's no distinction between reality VS imagination. Also, there's absolutely no distinction on topics like porn VS artictic nude.
This sexophobia strikes me deeply and, as a LGBTQ* activist and a firm believer in freedom of expressions - especially artistic ones - I am disgusted. The lack of attention Patreon Staff is showing is not only making me lose time and money, but also making me feel inappropriate, sick, shameful. I absolutely cannot get over this and I will take actions against this.
What will I do? Of course my first action needed is to unblock my Patreon profile, in order to fix every possible problem with payments, tiers or whatsoever. In fact, my Patreon page is currently under review procedure and 90% of the contents have been already relabeled "Patrons only" or deleted. Secondly, I'm gonna hopefully gather my payouts for May (payday should be today, in fact) and this will be the last month keeping same tiers and rewards. From June, my Patreon channel will have no Tiers, no Rewards, and will probably be dismantled.
I'll keep you all posted about this and I'm also taking the chance to thank in public all my Patrons, my beloved supporters, all of you: this is what Patreon was good about. It has been great to know so many people around, from different country and age and sexuality, gathered around to support myself and my art. Thank you! This is, hopefully, a see you and not a goodbye ;)
Until then, I hope things go better for you in the future and I'm sorry this has happened to you :c
Thanks for your support dude!
I know some people are switching to Ko-fi for donations since people can set it up to continuously donate monthly, if it's something you decide to look into in the future.
ti consiglio di cercare un'altro sito più tollerante col quale i tuoi supporters possono supportarti e di mandare a quel paese patreon! da un anno a questa parte stanno apportando tutta una serie di modifiche che portano alla censura e alla rimozione di qualunque cosa -.-"
But if you do that, I suggest creating artwork that is suggestive as well; you sell it as lithographed prints. in a limited run about 1,000 as a rule with each one numbered, to be made into collector items. Your pornography as well would be a good idea in this same regard.
'Fred' might be code for Muslim hater group.
Of course, it depends on the local legislation where the servers are hosted (California, specifically), and I can imagine this measurements - as harsh as they are - are only meant to protect themselves from the possible laws infrangements.
In all honesty, though, this is ridiculous and it sounds like a crusade. There's absolutely no distinction in those forbidden contents categories between real VS fictional contents. There's no distinction between reality VS imagination. Also, there's absolutely no distinction on topics like porn VS artictic nude.
That's where I'm pointing my finger at: from a service providing a platform for artists I would expect a lot more criteria in such matters.
Just my opinion of course, I can just see the writing on the wall and I'm sorry this has happened to you.