Some further thoughts on the adults only pages

Patreon Feedback
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I must admit I was a bit confused as to why, exactly, we needed an age verification checkbox (which is kind of a joke in general because if someone wants the content, which they do, they are going to lie) when we already have to flag our pages as NSFW. Credit card companies have age verification built into the transactions. Welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department.

Then I read about the issues plaguing other adult page creators fighting against what seems to be arbitrary enforcement of the censorship rules.
And there is still the fact that we adult creators pay the same fees as SFW creators, yet have half the access to half the tools, with half the exposure, and are quite literally swept under the rug because we do not show up in searches. We are the dirty little secret of Patreon.

I don’t want to come across as confrontational so please don’t take it this way. I imagine that Patreon would wither away and die if they had to suddenly remove adult creators entirely and chop off what we estimate is 30% or more of their revenue.

It occurs to me that ALL of these problems can be solved if Patreon simply grows a pair, addresses the elephant in the room (which EVERYONE knows about) and simply put a settings checkbox in to allow search and view of adult material.

Perhaps the reason this isn’t done because of PayPal mandates. However, PayPal has a partnership with Epoch to do direct PayPal billing for adult website subscriptions! So where, really, is the problem. Surely Patreon can negotiate around this obstacle.

So, let’s just put it all out on the table, please, Patreon. Why, point for point, can we not be somehow included as an official part of Patreon with the same services and privileges as everyone else? Why must adult creators be second-class citizens? Are the credit card companies strong-arming you? And can you think of any ways to help us get where we want?

You are always saying that you want a clear and direct line between you and me, but I never feel that way because you never communicate with me that way. All the serious questions are met with frightened, deer-in-headlights responses. We can take direct answers. We’ve been asking for them. You’re not going to hurt our feelings with real answers. Don’t act like there are things you “can’t say” because we all have thick skin; we didn’t get to be good artists without being hardened by rejection.

We want access to better services and exposure, you want to help us get there (because we both benefit) so what and where are the obstacles? Let’s talk. For real. What harm is there in everyone being on the same page? And perhaps someone out there who is being kept in the dark can come up with the Next Great Idea™ to improve everything for both sides.

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I don’t have a problem with being “unsearchable” because the way my Patreon works is that the stuff I write gets posted publicly on a time delay. This means people can see my work and click the link I leave to come plege to me. I can see why this might be an issue for others though.

I have zero issues with how I’ve been treated as an NSFW content creator thus far but I am nervously watching things with a worry that the rules will be changed and my income will be taken away with next to know warning.

I would love Patreon to come out and say categorically that they support adult content creators on their site and will continue to do so in future.

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Done 2 days ago. First line of last paragraph.

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My mistake for missing that and thanks for pointing it out to me :slight_smile:

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Words are cheap. They keep saying things have not changed. They have.

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And suddenly my page is blocked. WTF. There is nothing showing ANYWHERE.

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Everything I’ve ever seen you post publicly is well censored which I thought we were allowed to do. :confused: I’m so worried about my Patreon being shutdown for stupid reasons and I’ve literally gone through all 1000+ posts of mine (if my public and private post count math is correct) and have gotten rid of even things that shouldn’t be a problem publicly but changed their settings anyways because of this shit but now I’m sure I haven’t done enough and I’m just waiting to get dinged now since some of the changes in Interpretation are completely ridiculous.

I’m so sorry you’ve been put under review. This is ridiculous and the fact they don’t outright tell you what’s wrong is such a time waster. Every other site tells you specifically what the problem posts are if they deem it against the rules. When people have hundreds if not thousands of posts to go through, I don’t understand how they expect us to automatically know what is now against the rules when things seem to be different now.

I hope your stuff gets restored soon :confused:

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According to your email, and I quote:
“We are writing to let you know that your account is currently suspended because it violates our Community Guidelines.
If you want to reactivate your account, please read the Community Guidelines carefully and make any necessary updates to your creator page. If you have any questions, please answer directly to this email and a member of the team will be in touch as soon as possible.”
“Content that can be viewed publicly on the site cannot contain nudity or adult content. Adult content includes any implied nudity, full rear view nudity, or visible nipples or genitalia.”

My page contains none of the described content. There is no public nudity. Anything and everything is covered with censor bars or other objects. No full rear, full frontal, nipples, genitals, etc.

Looking up the definition of implied nudity: “Implied nudity is just what it sounds like: photos where nudity is suggested, but the viewer can’t be certain precisely how undressed the model is. … There are two ways of achieving implied nudity in photos. The first is to make someone look as if she or he is naked when really, they’re not.”
Seems an absurd reason to block anything especially as art is concerned. Still, there is none of this in any of my posts.

I run a business. I’ve been running it since 2000. This is my business. It is how I feed my family and pay not just myself but other artists and programmers who rely on the income. And you are screwing it up with your inconsistent behavior.
I don’t need you. It’s nice to have you, but you are just another stream of residual income that I can replace with something else.

THIS RIGHT HERE is your terrible policies coming back to bite you.

So, I’ll give you 48 hours. If you can’t reinstate my page or explain EXACTLY why you suspended my page (your linked community guidelines are vague at best and provide no reason or explanation), I’m done with you.

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I must say thank you to Maritza for lighting the fire under wherever it needed to be lit and getting this resolved ASAP.

Some feedback for you all:

Somewhere on the real Planet Earth where there are professionals at the wheel of these things, when a rule change is instituted, we get this thing called a notification of pending rule change, that goes something like this:
“We are changing the rules regarding NSFW pages, to include this:”
usually including examples and clarifications WHICH ARE VERY SPECIFIC that we may all go and rectify anything that is on the wrong side of the rules. Ahead of time.

Furthermore, to keep it classy, you also say something like this:
“In 30 days we will begin reviewing pages for compliance. Any non-compliant pages will be warned and then suspended if they remain in noncompliance.”

And then, when reviewing pages, send them an email that goes something like this before you suspend them:
“We were reviewing your site and found it to be in non-compliance with (x rule) for (y VERY SPECIFIC reason). Please fix the problem. If you do not fix it within 48 hours we will have to suspend your page until the problem has been rectified.”

So very much NOT how this situation played out. You succeeded in:
(A) alienating productive members of your community and supporters of your business
(B) alienating patrons who have no idea why their pledge they just spent money on is now inaccessible
© making us all really worry about the future of any future business stability with you
(D) getting us to look at your competition, with vigor

And it all could have been prevented, if you just sat down and spent 15 minutes hashing it out before you went and just started blasting holes in your ship.

So, this has come up in previous conversations, and I’ve asked it both rhetorically and straight-up, “Do you guys even sit back and think about any of this stuff before you implement it?” Seems like this one was a decision that people should not only have given a few minutes of extra scrutiny, but slept on and made a decision later after having given it some very serious thought.

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Hey everyone. Earlier this month we shared some information in response to your questions around an increase in suspended pages.

First off, we’ve seen concern about creators missing their June payment if they are still suspended on the payment date. We can confirm that a second payment will go out in mid July for those creators who are able to reform their page before then.

Secondly, we want to reiterate that our community guidelines have not changed, but we have been more proactive in reviewing the content on Patreon due to requirements from our payments partners. This is to ensure that all pages are compliant with the rules and we’re able to provide a safe platform for creators and patrons.

Lastly, we want to share some improvements we’ve made to expedite the review process:

  • Team Size: We doubled the size of the support team to ensure we get back to people as fast as humanly possible, which means there are Patreon team members working 7 days a week.
  • One-on-One Support: Replying to creators quickly is critical as it means we can then start providing one-on-one support by assigning each creator a specific manager to help them. That manager understands the creator’s page, their art, and how to best get their page compliant with the guidelines.

If you don’t hear back from someone on the support team within 48 hours, please message me directly and I will do my very best to find out what’s going on. I’ve personally read and shared every thread about this topic with the rest of the team, and I know there’s a lot of frustration and confusion about how this was communicated. I’d love to hear more from you about how we can get better at this.

Please know that we hear you and your feedback. We care. We’ll continue to provide updates as we can.

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FINALLY. Thank you for finally putting that into print. It’s Paypal.

You make it sound like the same guidelines have always been there, it’s only now that you are deciding to enforce them. Seriously? Why would you do something like that? Because it definitely lulled us adult creators into a false sense of security, you know. And that’s a crappy thing to do to people who depend on their creator income to pay their bills and…live.

I think a more accurate description of what is going down here is that Paypal would not be really specific and transparent about what they wanted censored when you signed up with them. Instead they gave you generalities, so you gave them to us. Now Paypal is getting very specific and forcing you to censor a lot of thing you didn’t seem to think needed to be censored before (unless you were just breaking the rules and crossing your fingers - which would be a pretty awful thing to do). That sounds a lot to me like there have indeed been changes. Like I keep saying…

Reiterate all you want, things have definitely changed.

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Wow so well said!!!

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