Adult Content Creators Sign Letter Opposing New Patreon Policy

CYBERSPACE—It seems just last week that crowdfunding site Patreon changed its rules to attempt to eliminate members seeking funds for the creation of "pornographic" content—and now, some of those creators have posted an open letter to Patreon's "head of legal" Colin Sullivan protesting the censorship attempt.

"Putting creators first on a platform is a balancing act," Sullivan wrote in a blog post, after assuring its members that the company is devoted to "Trust and Safety." "We have to make judgment calls about where to draw the line between an individual creator’s right to use Patreon and Patreon’s ability to be a home for all creators."

"As part of updating the Community Guidelines, we’re taking a clearer stance on some fringe areas of Adult Content," he added. "Over the past few months, there’s been a lot of discussion among our Trust and Safety team about how we can better articulate how we evaluate certain areas of content. It became evident that we needed to outline a clearer stance on some fringe adult content. With today’s update, we’re also being more clear about specific categories of fictional erotic content that Patreon cannot be used to support (including incest, bestiality, sexual depiction of minors, and suggestive sexual violence)." [Emphasis in original]

The result of Patreon's Trust and Safety team being "more clear" has resulted in an unknown number of members, many of them sex workers, having their Patreon sites removed and their subscribers' donations either not collected or withheld pending site review by that Trust and Safety team. And that hasn't sat well with at least 760 of those members, who all signed onto an "Open Letter" to Sullivan expressing their "deep disappointment" as to Patreon's "handling of clarity with regards to adult content on your platform, and the mixed messages we have been receiving."

"Not only that, the most vulnerable among us—disproportionately queer, trans, disabled, people of color and those whose first language is not English—are literally scared for our lives," the letter continues. "After hard-won fandoms finally supporting us on Patreon, just one missed payment can mean homelessness."

But perhaps the letter-signers' biggest objection appears to be Patreon's hypocrisy regarding adult content.

"This problem has only been brought further to the forefront in recent days, where you have long had a checkbox on your site [pictured] that says 'Content contains sexual imagery or nudity'," the letter points out, "[w]hich now exists alongside new language in your October 17th update, to the Adult Content section, which says this:

“Lastly, you cannot sell pornographic material or arrange sexual service(s) as a reward for your patrons. 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.”

"Which is exactly, as you well know, how many of your most popular creators operate," the letter continues. "We send our patrons signed prints. We let them pick what kind of movie to make. It’s even how you’ve recommended we operate—using Patreon to fund a movie, or creating a website to reliably deliver rewards to our patrons! We’ve got the support conversations to back it up."

A later update to that allowable content language "clarified" that the company's "stance hasn’t changed, just the way it articulates the policy around pornography and other adult content. Which is to say that producers of pornography and sex workers more generally have always been 'operating outside of the Community Guidelines.'"

"As we see it, this is further confirmation of a betrayal of your loyal creators and their loyal patrons," the letter charges. "You’ve made a statement to cover yourself, but completely ignored those who generate the money on your platform and use it to pay their rents. Your platform strikes a pose in favor of freedom of expression, but there is no way your current contradictory stances can result in any sort of comfort to the creators. ... Your fuzzy position on 'adult content' vs. 'porn' gives you the freedom to discriminate at will. And it makes content creators live in fear of that discrimination, itself leading to self censorship of important viewpoints. ...  As journalist Violet Blue noted, 'We are barred from Facebook, Instagram, Paypal, MailChimp, WordPress.org, Squarespace, Square, Kickstarter, Chase, Snapchat, AdWords. Add that Tumblr and other sites make us unfindable. Now imagine trying to start or run a business and being unable to use these tools.'"

The letter's signers ask just two things from the company: 1) "Guarantee that adult content creators, of any legal content, will not have their sources of income revoked," and 2) "Keep your promises to adult content creators and end the system of arbitrarily judging what is and isn’t acceptable expression."

Of the signers, only a few are familiar names, including Violet Blue (the journalist, not the porn star now renamed Noname Jane); Alice X (not to be confused with the live cam site AliceX); and Laura Kerrigan, creator of the "Season of the Bitch" podcast. However, all of the signers fear that they are in danger of being cut off from their Patreon pages and subscribers—and considering their self-descriptions of their content noted beside their signatures, their fears could well be justified.

Of particular note to adult industry members with Patreon sites, after the list of signing Patreon members, the letter includes the following: "This section to be updated as people choose to be added as featured cosigners ... live updated signatures will be displayed below the form." Again, the link to add a Patreon member to the protest letter is here. Names can also be emailed to [email protected].