The only thing changed on the Patreon adult guidelines in the last 3 years was “no bestiality or loli, and incest/non-consensual stuff is a case by case basis”. Everything else was there since 2015, I’ve got emails saying as such and screencaps as well 
I’m not saying to distribute your pledge reward content only in Discord, you should be posting it on the activity feed; however, you should be making your activity feed posts private, per Patreon policy, and posting all your activity feed posts publicly on other websites besides Patreon.
It may seem counterintuitive, but posting your stuff publicly on other websites and not leaving much that’s exclusive on your Patreon page itself besides certain rewards (again, privated) can actually bring in more people; we do that, and we’re currently bringing in nearly $15,000 a month.
We have a fairly active Discord where we post rewards at too, even to people who aren’t currently backing us but just backed us in the past, etc.
I don’t think they’ll ever decide that Patron-locked and privated NSFW content would be bad, that would be very surprising if so.
The problem with clear-cut definitions is the same problem that exists with any business, and why you won’t ever see any business giving a clear-cut definition if they’re worth their salt when it comes to things like this topic; people themselves are the problem.
What I mean by this is that if I were Patreon staff, and I said, for example, “For implied nudity, you cannot have the person completely nude and with black bars over their chest, they need to be wearing some sort of clothing.”
This will inevitably result in a host of cases where people have women wearing tiny tiny tiny microbikinis that are 1 pixel wide, showing significant areola or even if they don’t, still being far little clothing. Then, when they get hit, they will complain to Patreon saying “but you said in the rules that implied nudity was bad only if it was black bars and if we had clothing it was okay!”
So then Patreon will have to spend even more time further outlining the rules, making them ultra-hyper specific, something that’s like 10 pages long and no one will ever read, to abide by and account for all possible loopholes in the system.
This then punishes the creators because, whoops, your bikini on your character is too flesh colored, or whoops, it’s showing approximately 2% more skin that it should be on a bikini to skin ratio, or whoops, her outfit is showing too much of her pelvic area, etc. and it becomes a complete madhouse for both Patreon to regulate and the creators to sift through tons of pages of information on, as well as forcing them to take action on the slightest infraction on the rules, making things even harsher on all involved.
This is why companies don’t establish hard, clear-cut guidelines, because anytime a business does this, to summarize, those three things happen in order;
- creators exploit/loophole the specific wording
- business makes insanely detailed, unescapable guidelines
- business now has to spend enormous amount of time policing for this and creators are hit for the tiniest infractions possible unless they’ve memorized the extensive rules
Having things somewhat vague is a win for everyone, because then it allows businesses to allow for edge cases to get by, it allows for flexibility in the rules, and it allows the business to take action when someone is clearly trying to loophole or exploit the system, without punishing everyone else as a result.
As a creator, my best suggestion is to err on being as safe as possible with the guidelines; you honestly don’t need any NSFW art on your front page (or even any NSFW dialogue) to get people to pledge, if you’ve done your job right on the outside of Patreon.
