Seems like a perfect opportunity to create a Patreon for adult only content.
An Open Letter to Patreon
171–180 of 245 posts
Re: An Open Letter to Patreon
#172This letter reflects very poorly on the writer(s). You would think Patreon is the difference between life and death for them (they basically say as much). You would think that without Patreon, nobody would be interested in their creations. I'm sorry but -wow-. You've got other ways to collect payments from people who support your work... and if you have a fanbase already, I'm not sure where the problem lies in moving…
Adults whinged constantly before the internet too. The only difference is that you used to not be able to hear them unless you were at the same water cooler/bar at the same time.
Re: An Open Letter to Patreon
#173Seems like a perfect opportunity to create a Patreon for adult only content.
It's not like that hasn't been tried:
https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-ba...
"In 2012 TED speaker Cindy Gallop launched a crowdsourced porn site based on her TED Talk, "Make Love Not Porn," which highlights unrealistic expectations about porn sex. Gallop had raised $500,000 from an undisclosed angel investor, but discovered her company "couldn't work with PayPal, couldn't work with Amazon, couldn't work with Google Checkout, couldn't work with any of the main merchant partner gateways."
Gallop said, "So, we thought, let's go back to Chase, we have a business banking account there, let's apply for a commercial account. Unfortunately, that application surfaced the nature of our business within higher levels at Chase. And it resulted in a meeting with a more senior guy, who essentially said to us, not only can we not give you a commercial account, but you now need to close your business bank account and take your business away." "
Re: An Open Letter to Patreon
#174I heard a story a while ago about how marajuana-related companies in colorado formed some financial institution in order to deal with being blocked out of the wider financial ecosystem. The piece of the puzzle I don't understand yet is why credit card processors appear to have taken it upon themselves to be the moral police. They could very easily make the argument that the use of money transferred isn't their proble…
It has absolutely nothing at all to do with being the moral police and everything to do with living in fear of serious, potentially business-killing consequences for failing to comply with federal laws, rules and regulations.
Re: An Open Letter to Patreon
#175Does anyone else recollect the expression “no one owes you a business model”? There’s many reasons Patreon should want to avoid being a porn payments processor. Blame American Puritanism or whatever, but that’s the milieu in which they operate. They don’t owe it to anyone to bear excess risk just so that someone else can have a profitable hustle at their expense. If this is such a big issue for the LGBT community Fun…
If Patreon is worried about associating their brand with pornography, they could still spin off a sister site under an entirely different domain, brand, and infrastructure, but with the same underlying codebase. If Big Food and Big Opthalmology and Big Others can present the illusion of competition by having one parent company own all the brands on the market, why not Patreon?
>, they could still spin off a sister site under an entirely different domain, brand,
I think it's a decent idea but my guess is that it wouldn't be enthusiastically received by the adult creators.
The "Patreon" brand has already accumulated legitimacy and trust. The adult-themed content creators would want to continue to leverage that.
The creator selling sex performances gets to be in the same "digital inventory" (because it's the same patreon.com url) as the neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris, the Crash Course history education videos by John Green and his brother, the electronics disassembly videos by AvE, etc. Yes, the NSFW creators are already filtered out of general search pages and therefore hidden -- but at least they are still in the same patreon domain as the other respectable content creators.
They wouldn't want a separate url such that the customers' credit-card bill would have a line item such as Adultreon.com or Porntreon.com. Yes, the url domain name doesn't have to blatantly shout "rated X" but it does have to be sufficiently different from "patreon" so as to not taint that growing brand name. Even if you gave it a non-obvious name like noertap9.com, people would eventually mentally associate "noertap" with "rated X" anyway. (E.g. people already know that "redtube.com" which has an innocuous name -- is not about the color "red": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedTube)
Re: An Open Letter to Patreon
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patreon, where consumers have a direct relationship with individual creators, would seem like the perfect way to avoid those issues though.
What if Patreon wants to be family friendly, and allowing the selling of porn on Patreon ruins that image? Seems like a business opportunity for another website to take that niche, a "Porntreon" if you will.
Aren't NSFW filters good enough for family friendliness in America?
There are, of course, things which are not suitable for children, frightening things, disturbing things, content related to immoral behavior.
But if you ask an American, the destruction of life is far more suitable for children than it's creation. Patreon has no qualms hosting videos fantasizing mass murder and death [1] even when those videos are obviously aimed at children [2]. Is this really family friendliness or merely some strange flaw in our psychology without moral or philosophic basis?
[1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/dreadnought-epic-13951713 [2] https://www.patreon.com/posts/103684
Re: An Open Letter to Patreon
#177This letter reflects very poorly on the writer(s). You would think Patreon is the difference between life and death for them (they basically say as much). You would think that without Patreon, nobody would be interested in their creations. I'm sorry but -wow-. You've got other ways to collect payments from people who support your work... and if you have a fanbase already, I'm not sure where the problem lies in moving…
What are the other ways to collect payments? Paypal? Nope [1]. Stripe? Nope [2].
See the quote I posted here about someone who tried:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551817
Generally it's not rare to see websites restrict their content not because its illegal, but because it's impossible to collect payment for any of your content, if some of your content is deemed unacceptable by VISA/Mastercard, etc...
And patreon marketed itself to content producers specifically as not following the paypal/stripe example.
[1] https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/what-is-paypal%E2...
Re: An Open Letter to Patreon
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there data on that? I've heard this theory before but never seen any evidence to back it up.
I don't have any sourceable data on hand unfortunately, this is what payment processors told me when I was trying to set a service up
Can confirm, fees would be high due to chargebacks and fraud in general. See here [1] a couple of numbers from a common industry biller.
Re: An Open Letter to Patreon
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve seen no evidence that they have actively courted that niche, though. As far as I can see, they’ve had a policy of benign neglect - which is far from the same thing.
If you make the charitable assumption that the letter's writers are not lying, this relationship is clearly spelled out at the top of the second paragraph: > Over the last couple years we have been courted by you, worked closely with you on promotion, creation, and even website features, and have been assured by you that Patreon was a home for all types of creators – including those that make adult content.
Without accusing anyone of lying at all, the letter writer goes out of their way to make it seem like the LGBT community, adult content community, and porn community are the same thing, and they’re representing all 3. I don’t know which of these Patreon has courted, though, or how much. To quote,
“However, there has always been an issue with your stance on “porn” versus “adult content.” This stance has never been clear and is reminiscent of the phrase “I know it when I see it”, most infamously used in 1964 by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for obscenity. This is an outdated, legally unclear, and importantly, extremely problematic view of adult media.”
So, to Patreon, this doesn’t seem to be a distinction without a difference. I happen to agree: an artistic nude is adult content, but isn’t the same adult content as a blowjob video. Even if no one is lying, I have no trouble reading that letter as “you courted and reassured us (LGBT, adult content), and now you’re abandoning us (pornographers)”. Which doesn’t require deceit - I’m sure there’s overlap and gray areas. But it doesn’t require Patreon to be playing dirty either.
Re: An Open Letter to Patreon
#180This letter reflects very poorly on the writer(s). You would think Patreon is the difference between life and death for them (they basically say as much). You would think that without Patreon, nobody would be interested in their creations. I'm sorry but -wow-. You've got other ways to collect payments from people who support your work... and if you have a fanbase already, I'm not sure where the problem lies in moving…
What are the other ways to collect payments? Paypal? Nope [1]. Stripe? Nope [2]. See the quote I posted here about someone who tried: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551817 Generally it's not rare to see websites restrict their content not because its illegal, but because it's impossible to collect payment for any of your content, if some of your content is deemed unacceptable by VISA/Mastercard, etc... And pa…
I'm pretty sure Stripe and Paypal are Patreon's two payment processors, so I'm not surprised that they're having the same issues.