An Open Letter to Patreon

> 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.”

Which is how Congress and various AG want it. There's a two pronged attack which is designed to appeal to a small, vocal, minority:

- Banks and credit card companies get threatened with some regulation (limitation on interest rates or fees, for example). They negotiate and say "how about we crack down on those damned pornographers / terrorists/other out group and you leave us alone?"

- Newspapers, web sites, etc get threatened with some regulation (profits, speech, loss of section 230 protection for example). They negotiate and say "how about we crack down on those damned pornographers / terrorists/other out group and you leave us alone?"

And while this sounds like tit-for-tat, the level of threat even a large company like Facebook faces is existential. Look at what happened to Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio (in his case it wasn't a so-called "morals" issue: he refused to allow his company to participate in a government illegal surveillance scheme and was sent to jail on trumped-up charges).

This works very well for all concerned: Congress/AG can rely on the votes and quiet of small block the so-called "moral" extremists; companies can continue to exist and a different, not quite as small block of typically underprivileged people gets screwed.

Oh yeah, not so good for that last group. This all sounds cynical, but you can see from the real world that it's not: By going after these so-called "moral" cases, we make things a lot worse:

- those who really are being exploited are hard to find (police used to use Backpage to find human trafficking -- oops, sorry no more)

- Those who are not being exploitative are shut out by regulation, which is economically and socially destructive to providers, consumers and the rest of the community.

As with the "war on drugs", there is no effort to address actual problems; it's use of the taxpayer's dollar to secure votes.

(AG = Attornies General)

Not at all difficult, really. It is only difficult in the sense that it is difficult to tell the difference between a snake and an elephant if all you can do is feel its tail. If you actually know what is happening then the distinction is obvious.

Another day, another technology that gained momentum thanks to adult content abandoning that high risk/high cost demographic for less turbulent waters .

While I can strongly empathize with the stress and fear of losing one's income, especially if one has gone down a precarious career route like adult entertainment, the naïvete the authors demonstrate when talking about their own industry is disturbing. Completely explaining away all the difficulties of having a non insignificant portion of your business be driven by adult content as "discrimination" shows a shocking lack of knowledge of how hard it is to actually run a business with adult content... extraordinarily expensive lawyers, exorbitant cc fees, expensive banking if you can even get it, time consuming CYA reviews of material that almost always have to be done by an expensive human, etc. etc. Not only do these content creators get all of this for free, but they're subsidized by all of the non adult content on Patreon as well! It was only a matter of time before the gravy train ended, and not foreseeing/expecting this to happen makes me think these people should not be running their own businesses, much less businesses with such a extremely high risk profile.

All that said, seems like a business opportunity to start catering to this demographic and providing all of the above. You probably won't be able to compete with Patreon's white washed image or cache, and you'll definitely be more expensive, but your content creators will be able to count on a steady income. Or at least steady when compared to the rest of the adult industry.

Then again, if you want all of this pain but with none of the social stigma they can always get into bitcoin.

> Another day, another technology that gained momentum thanks to adult content abandoning that high risk/high cost demographic for less turbulent waters .

Wut? I heard patreon via Crash Course, and the Greens are among the founders, AFAIK. The main guy being a musician. It's only today that I know of an adult community trying to make use of the service.

We're talking about morality, not laws.