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Patreon Is Suspending Adult Content Creators Because of Its Payment Partners (vice.com)

Some adult content creators on crowdfunding site Patreon are being suspended due to the suggestive material they produce. The platform said that they are increasing efforts to review content, due to payment processor pressure. Motherboard reports: In late 2017, Patreon expanded its adult content guidelines, to include stricter guidelines for "bestiality, incest, sexual depiction of minors, and suggestive sexual violence." At the time, it resulted in suspensions and bans of many adult content creators whose work Patreon previously permitted, but no longer fell in line with new guidelines. Now, many more adult content creators are reporting that they're experiencing a renewed wave of suspensions on the platform. Patreon's guidelines for adult content state that "all public content on your page be appropriate for all audiences," and "content with mature themes must be marked as a patron-only post." For several of these reports, Patreon warned that "implied nudity" was the reason for the suspension, where it appeared in public areas or publicly-visible patron tiers and banners. "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," the guidelines state.

37 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Middlemen should be invisible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Now they're propping themselves up like kings.

    1. Re:Middlemen should be invisible by KiloByte · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This. A payment processor should never be allowed to refuse any legal transaction, when in a doubt that's the police's work not theirs. An ISP should never be allowed to ban or slow down any sites, any questions of legality need to go to the police not to the middlemen (and even then, it's not up to the ISP to enact bans). A non-curated (ie, done by the public rather than exclusively by the provider) news/blog/etc site should never be allowed to discriminate content based on political views. Etc, etc.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    2. Re: Middlemen should be invisible by KiloByte · · Score: 2

      Sounds like you're advocating making "Republican use only" roads in some states and "Democrat use only" in others. That's why the concept of common carrier is so important.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    3. Re:Middlemen should be invisible by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not always the payment processors that are pushing for this directly. There are often laws put in place designed to crack down on certain behaviors (see Craigslist closing down their personals section recently) and payment services are required to abide by them. If the laws are vaguely defined then the processors are going to be more strict than necessary because running afoul of law even once is nightmare for them.

      Think of it this way. If I'm a payment processor I get paid by processing payments. I really don't care if those are for groceries, commissioned artworks, illicit drugs, or prostitutes. I get paid either way and it's in my best interest to process as many payments as possible. However, the government isn't powerful enough to be able to even put a dent in behavior it doesn't like and can't even begin to unilaterally enforce it. So they make laws that make processing payments for certain things illegal. It's much easier for them to go after me than it is hundreds of people buying drugs, so it's in my interest to not let anyone pay for anything that looks like illegal drugs using my system even if that means I inadvertently prevent some hippies from buying some herbal tea that's in no way illegal from time to time. You can still get that without laws (say that 90% of my customers are Mormons and don't want me to process payments for coffee) but it's rare.

      And even though I disagree with the new age puritanism that's making the rounds, I don't think it's my right to tell a company that they can't give in to pressure from their customers if they want to. If they think keeping the 90% Mormon customers at the expense of losing the other 10% is better than potentially losing a good chunk of 90% of their customers, that's their own business decision. If it's a bad business move, they'll fail and get replaced by a company that does a better job of serving consumers.

    4. Re: Middlemen should be invisible by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 2

      Because payment processors have a defacto monopoly and allowing them to arbitrarily restrict legal commercial speech gives them power which should be restricted to government.

    5. Re: Middlemen should be invisible by morethanapapercert · · Score: 2
      Much as hate such seemingly morals based refusal to do business polices, I have to admit I see some important points from the payment processors side of things.

      Online payments (primarily credit card based, but I include things like Paypal and Bitcoin) are effectively forms of banking transactions. While it would be nice from a libertarian point of view to consider financial transaction providers as common carriers like the post and telephone networks, the reality is that they can't be. There is a large amount of laws and regulations that dictate how financial companies can do business. For actual banking in cash, as long as the bank follows the regulations, does the due diligence reporting of suspicious activity and allows law enforcement access to customer accounts, they do have common carrier-like protection from being considered an accessory to any criminal activity on the part of the customer(s). But those laws were mostly written in the pre-Internet age They generally assume that a person in country A is paying someone else in country A using a bank based in country A.

      Online payments however are a significantly different proposition. A person in country A could be paying a person or business in country B via a web portal hosted in country C and using a financial services provider from country D. Which nations countries laws apply here? Note that the US dominates both the web hosting and financial services industries. So regardless of where the customer and artist happen to live, they both end up being controlled by US law.

      Furthermore, unlike the banks, online payment processors are not as legally separated from a customers crimes as a physical bank would be. IANAL of course, but I think under US law, if person A in Canada bought content that was created by an artist in Australia but was hosted in the US and payment was processed in the US where that content was illegal, then the payment processor can be charged as an accessory to a crime. (I'm reminded of the hoary legal joke about the man convicted of taking a bribe from the man who was acquitted of paying it)

      --
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  2. Only in America by nagora · · Score: 3, Insightful

    is "implied nudity" a reason to ban something but banning weapons that enable you to massacre a crowd from a quarter of a mile away is controversial.

    --
    "Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
    1. Re:Only in America by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      “If you suck on a tit the movie gets an R rating. If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG.”

  3. Patreon want a competitor by hyades1 · · Score: 2

    Since Patreon takes a slice of the pie, it would be nice to see how happy they'd be if everybody who had material even a little bit suggestive took their projects to a new site that dealt unabashedly with porn. Such a site would be well-advised to reserve an area for head-to-head competition with Patreon for family friendly projects. I'll leave the social dynamics of the situation for another day, but I think we can all agree that the people most interested in pornography are sometimes the same ones who would love to have an excuse for "accidentally" straying into the wrong area.

    Call the site "Pudtreon" or something.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  4. The transactions are high risk by rsilvergun · · Score: 3, Interesting

    it's not nothing to do with moral policing. Credit card transactions are effectively loans. In large parts of the world you have a legal right to dispute any charge on your card as a result. Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge). Even if you can prove the charge is valid it's still expensive to do so. Hence why nobody wants to be involved in it.

    With corporations always, always, always follow the money. Anything bigger than a leomonade stand is completely amoral.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:The transactions are high risk by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's why we need a way of making payments that can't be arbitrarily denied by middle-men. Bitcoin was great before it got hijacked by ponzi scheme "investors".

      The credit card mafia speaks with one voice, with Mastercard differing from VISA by nothing but name. They collude for prices, collude for policies, collude for denying business. And collude for bribing legislators to deny competitors who are not a part of the cartel.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    2. Re:The transactions are high risk by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If these disputes were half as onerous as you claim then the porno industry would have packed up business years ago.

      It hasn't. Umm, or so I'm told.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    3. Re:The transactions are high risk by jeti · · Score: 4, Interesting

      At one point, Visa tried to prevent German shops from selling Cuban cigars. I guess these transactions were high risk as well and Visa did not try to police the world according to US political views.

    4. Re:The transactions are high risk by Aristos+Mazer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The ability to buy fiat currency with bitcoin is a key part of its ability to replace fiat currency. Those "investors" that KiloByte put in quotes do the same thing with fiat currency. Monetary traders mediate the prices between different currencies and make money on the margins.

      There's no ponzi scheme for bitcoin that is any different from the ponzi scheme of fiat currency... only the volatility is different. Bitcoin doesn't have a Federal Reserve or equivalent to stabilize itself. No one is moving banking interest rates in order to stabilize the Bitcoin currency, so it fluctuates on pure demand. That's how currency works.

    5. Re:The transactions are high risk by CaptainDork · · Score: 3, Interesting

      In the beginning, batshit crazy Bitcoinerites touted the "off the grid" anonymous, fee-less utopia of cryptocurrencies.

      We of sound mind informed that as soon as Bitcoin found a way to convert to more traditional currency, the shit would hit the fan.

      And, that's precisely what's happened.

      Now Bitcoin is subject to regulation, has lost its anonymity, is a commodity with exchange rates to fiat, and the IRS is working to tax transactions.

      Effectively, across the planet, Bitcoin is a proxy USD.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    6. Re: The transactions are high risk by reanjr · · Score: 2

      Probably by having tight relationships with a small set of sympathetic payment providers, keeping very detailed records, eating the excessive chargeback fees, and building their entire pricing structure based on the reality in which they operate.

    7. Re:The transactions are high risk by uffe_nordholm · · Score: 3, Informative
    8. Re:The transactions are high risk by MtHuurne · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge).

      That doesn't apply to Patreon though, since Patreon charges just show up as "Patreon" on the credit card statement; the specific creators that received the money are listed in an e-mail instead.

    9. Re:The transactions are high risk by BlueStrat · · Score: 5, Interesting

      's not nothing to do with moral policing. Credit card transactions are effectively loans. In large parts of the world you have a legal right to dispute any charge on your card as a result. Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge). Even if you can prove the charge is valid it's still expensive to do so. Hence why nobody wants to be involved in it.

      It has little to do with disputed CC charges.

      It has everything to do with government pressure applied to banks/CC companies to remove the ability to perform financial transactions from certain select legal businesses/individuals without due process or any proof of any crime. It was called "Operation Choke Point" under Obama and Holder.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      The same tactics are being used selectively against many adult/sex-related industries as well as gun dealers/stores and others the government considers "unsavory" for whatever political/ideological/moral/financial/religious reasons they choose.

      It was bad under Obama, it's bad under Trump. This should not be partisan at all. If the Rule of Law were still a thing in the US, those responsible would be seeing a prison cell, but sadly... .

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    10. Re:The transactions are high risk by Cederic · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's a curious 'correction', given that it's unfortunately very wrong.

      VISA and Mastercard are both in public ownership and are very different companies.

    11. Re:The transactions are high risk by Cederic · · Score: 2, Interesting

      At the end of the week I'm going to make a payment of round 4k GBP online.

      I could use my debit card, I could use a direct bank transfer, I could be a total fuckwit and use paypal.

      Instead I'm going to use the payment mechanism that includes free fraud protection, so that in the event I'm totally fucked up and transferred 4k to a scammer I'll get my money back.

    12. Re:The transactions are high risk by BlueStrat · · Score: 2

      From your link 'companies believed to be at higher risk for fraud and money laundering.'
      I'm pretty sure that fraud and money laundering aren't legal business...

      Those were the reasons given but they were not the only reasons.

      But the reasons are irrelevant to the fact that such threats by the federal government are blatantly unconstitutional as they attack legal businesses without any charges or due process involved. It is entirely unilateral with no judicial review or oversight nor authorized by any law or Act of Congress. The government cannot skirt the Constitution by using a monkey's paw.

      Strat

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    13. Re:The transactions are high risk by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      it's not nothing to do with moral policing.

      Actually it has plenty to do with moral policing. Credit card processors were single handedly implicated in the end of the beasiality porn industry in the USA even before *some* states passed laws banning the practice. Credit card processors have led some very targetted moral campaigns in the past. You're right in the general case that porn represents a high-risk to them, but within the industry they are very effective moral police.

    14. Re:The transactions are high risk by Cederic · · Score: 2

      What the fuck do merchant agreements have to do with company ownership?

    15. Re:The transactions are high risk by Cytotoxic · · Score: 2

      it's not nothing to do with moral policing. Credit card transactions are effectively loans. In large parts of the world you have a legal right to dispute any charge on your card as a result. Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge). Even if you can prove the charge is valid it's still expensive to do so. Hence why nobody wants to be involved in it.

      With corporations always, always, always follow the money. Anything bigger than a leomonade stand is completely amoral.

      This is a great take.... and unfortunately it is just not correct.

      This move is the direct result of Operation Choke Point.

      The US Federal government began threatening banks back in 2013 that if they did business with disfavored industries, they risked being taken down by the Feds. It is often sold as being about "money laundering", but it targeted legal business that were in disfavor with the administration like firearms dealers, check cashing services and payday lenders. Along with this other groups were impacted like adult entertainers like porn actresses and producers.

      These are perfectly legal businesses that the government decided they wanted to run out of business by threatening anyone who does business with them.

      And that is why Patreon is even in the conversation. Because they can have trouble even getting bank accounts. So adult entertainers and others have been forcibly "unbanked". Now they have to hunt around for other ways to move money and get paid.

      Even though the official program was recently ended, the effect lives on.

      The last 18 years has seen a massive shift away from civil liberties in many ways (USA PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretapping, metadata collection, etc.) and things like Operation Choke Point have changed the culture to the point where people actually see this sort of thing as acceptable. It isn't.

  5. Re:Good. by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Smut peddlers"? What year is it? 1938?

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  6. Re:Hmm by PPH · · Score: 5, Funny

    engaged in beastality or incest

    Someone uploaded excerpts from the bible?

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  7. Big opportunity by Kohath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The same thing is happening to firearms dealers doing online sales (which have all the same safeguards and background checks as in-person sales — and actually more traceability because credit card sales are more traceable than cash sales).

    Presumably these payment processors won't allow legal marijuana sales either. The realm of socially disapproved behavior grows larger every day.

    This creates a big, expanding opportunity for a payment processor who won't bow to the Twitter mobs and their blacklists and witch hunts.

    1. Re:Big opportunity by Kohath · · Score: 2

      Yeah, but if you read up on backpage you will see why they ended up that way. The stories I read said backpage was helping to rewrite ads offering sex with minors to avoid legal scrutiny.

      The market for porn and guns may not be huge. The market for anything the Twitter mobs don't approve of is growing to include more and more things every day. @jack just had to apologize for going to Chick-fil-A a couple weeks ago to avoid being bullied.

      Guns and porn today. Legal drugs tomorrow. Then church donations and non-socialist political candidates will be blacklisted. Who knows where it leads.

      It’s an expanding opportunity for someone.

  8. Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And pretty much all statistics and research into the subject shows that the best ways to fight teen pregnancies are good sexual education and access to prophylactics and birth control, not repression, pretending sex doesn't exist, censoring porn, or preaching abstinence.

    --
    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  9. Re:Censorship by tepples · · Score: 2

    What subscription service would you recommend instead of Patreon?

  10. Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down by Tom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are two different approaches to the question of truth.

    The scientific approach: Make up some theory, compare it against reality, adapt it as necessary to be a better fit, repeat until you can't think of improvements anymore

    The religious approach: Make up some theory, tell everyone else about it, build a system around it, selectively pick those facts that confirm your theory and with the support of the system you built, push these facts and suppress the others

    The US is an outlier in western civilisation. The importance of religious is comparable to 3rd world countries, but not to other western countries. As is the attitude towards anything sexual.

    (note that attitude doesn't mean people don't have massive businesses in this area. it just means they are considered smutty)

    The "abstinence programs" that the entire developed world (and good parts of the developing world) laugh about are not explainable in terms of western civilisation or education or anything except the backwater religiousity of the USA. Once you understood that religious thinking is the cause for such insanities, you understand that contradictory facts have zero effect.

    If anything, contradictions strengthen religious belief.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  11. Re:Good. by nightfire-unique · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Has what's right and wrong changed since 1938?

    No. What changed is that we're generally better educated, and today many people are able to successfully reject the onslaught of religious idiocy that was much more prevalent back then.

    The phrase "smut peddler" harkens back to an age when North America was dominated by religious people looking to control the sexuality of stupid people for monetary and/or power gains, and so intelligent people mock those who use it today.

    --
    A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
  12. Actually you don't regulate sex by aepervius · · Score: 4, Informative

    We regulate sex more than violence because relatively few people want to commit wanton acts of violence while just about everybody want sex.

    This is bollocks because you DO NOT regulate sex. Want you want to do ? Stop two teen having sex ? how ? Having them a iron udnerwaer with a lock for which you have only the key ? Just get real. No you don't regulate sex (except the separation adult/minor). What you do is restrict access to information. And what happen when access to information is restricted ? Well kids STILL have sex, but they do it without being fully aware of the consequence, or use and info rumor gossip and hoax circulating (like "you can't get pregnant if it is a rape". oh wait my bad that one was a politician - but sad joke aside misinformation is bad). That is why where teen get sex ed, they have consistently LESS unwanted pregnancy, and abstinence policy lead to MORE pregnancy. This is simply plain statistic and whether you are religious or not cannot deny, you can refuse them, pretend they do not exists, but we can all see them for what thy are.

    --
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    visit randi.org
  13. Re:Good. by nmb3000 · · Score: 2

    I'm glad to see payment processors taking an active role in what they facilitate.

    Oh, really? And how would you feel if your Visa card was declined because they felt that you should stop stuffing your obese face at McDonalds 4 times a week? And PayPal rejected your payment to your church fundraiser because they thought the group had too many extreme-right racist undertones for their liking?

    Payment processors should allow any legal transactions without trying to be the Morality Police. This is also the problem when a few middlemen consolidate too much power and is another reason why anyone who values freedom or privacy should push back against "cashless" societies.

    Perhaps we need some kind of "common carrier" laws for large payment processors. If Visa wants to control 70% of the credit card market then they must also allow any legal transaction between consenting parties or they are found in violation of common payment laws.

    --
    "What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
    /)
  14. Re:The odds of my kid getting gunned down by grep+-v+'.*'+* · · Score: 4, Funny

    pretending sex doesn't exist

    But sex doesn't exist. At least not around me, anyway. ;-(

    --
    If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
  15. Re:Censorship by Cederic · · Score: 2

    You want to run your business as independently as possible? Don't build it on top of things like Facebook or YouTube or Patreon. Build it on top of things like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. If you don't want to learn these skills, hire someone who can do these things for you

    Hmm. Why go to that expense when you can easily just outsource to someone that's already done this. Such as Patreon.

    Sure, you'll save money in the short term by just dumping everything on a "free" platform, but then they own you

    Patreon is not free, and they do not own the people that use their services.

    Further to that, most people raising funds on Patreon are earning tens of dollars a month at most. That's not going to cover much bespoke development.