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Patreon Is Suspending Adult Content Creators Because of Its Payment Partners (vice.com) 234

Some adult content creators on crowdfunding site Patreon are being suspended due to the suggestive material they produce. The platform said that they are increasing efforts to review content, due to payment processor pressure. Motherboard reports: In late 2017, Patreon expanded its adult content guidelines, to include stricter guidelines for "bestiality, incest, sexual depiction of minors, and suggestive sexual violence." At the time, it resulted in suspensions and bans of many adult content creators whose work Patreon previously permitted, but no longer fell in line with new guidelines. Now, many more adult content creators are reporting that they're experiencing a renewed wave of suspensions on the platform. Patreon's guidelines for adult content state that "all public content on your page be appropriate for all audiences," and "content with mature themes must be marked as a patron-only post." For several of these reports, Patreon warned that "implied nudity" was the reason for the suspension, where it appeared in public areas or publicly-visible patron tiers and banners. "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," the guidelines state.
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Patreon Is Suspending Adult Content Creators Because of Its Payment Partners

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Now they're propping themselves up like kings.

    • by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @11:29AM (#56875018)

      This. A payment processor should never be allowed to refuse any legal transaction, when in a doubt that's the police's work not theirs. An ISP should never be allowed to ban or slow down any sites, any questions of legality need to go to the police not to the middlemen (and even then, it's not up to the ISP to enact bans). A non-curated (ie, done by the public rather than exclusively by the provider) news/blog/etc site should never be allowed to discriminate content based on political views. Etc, etc.

      • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @11:38AM (#56875062)
        it's not nothing to do with moral policing. Credit card transactions are effectively loans. In large parts of the world you have a legal right to dispute any charge on your card as a result. Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge). Even if you can prove the charge is valid it's still expensive to do so. Hence why nobody wants to be involved in it.

        With corporations always, always, always follow the money. Anything bigger than a leomonade stand is completely amoral.
        • by KiloByte ( 825081 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @11:50AM (#56875102)

          That's why we need a way of making payments that can't be arbitrarily denied by middle-men. Bitcoin was great before it got hijacked by ponzi scheme "investors".

          The credit card mafia speaks with one voice, with Mastercard differing from VISA by nothing but name. They collude for prices, collude for policies, collude for denying business. And collude for bribing legislators to deny competitors who are not a part of the cartel.

        • by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @12:05PM (#56875156) Homepage Journal

          If these disputes were half as onerous as you claim then the porno industry would have packed up business years ago.

          It hasn't. Umm, or so I'm told.

          • The beastiality industry on the other hand has been completely destroyed. The GP is right that porn represents risk in the general sense, but is very wrong that the payment processors don't also act as a moral police.

        • by jeti ( 105266 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @12:40PM (#56875284)
          At one point, Visa tried to prevent German shops from selling Cuban cigars. I guess these transactions were high risk as well and Visa did not try to police the world according to US political views.
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It makes you wonder how porn sites take any payments.

          • Probably by having tight relationships with a small set of sympathetic payment providers, keeping very detailed records, eating the excessive chargeback fees, and building their entire pricing structure based on the reality in which they operate.

        • by MtHuurne ( 602934 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @04:09PM (#56876110) Homepage

          Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge).

          That doesn't apply to Patreon though, since Patreon charges just show up as "Patreon" on the credit card statement; the specific creators that received the money are listed in an e-mail instead.

        • by BlueStrat ( 756137 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @04:32PM (#56876200)

          's not nothing to do with moral policing. Credit card transactions are effectively loans. In large parts of the world you have a legal right to dispute any charge on your card as a result. Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge). Even if you can prove the charge is valid it's still expensive to do so. Hence why nobody wants to be involved in it.

          It has little to do with disputed CC charges.

          It has everything to do with government pressure applied to banks/CC companies to remove the ability to perform financial transactions from certain select legal businesses/individuals without due process or any proof of any crime. It was called "Operation Choke Point" under Obama and Holder.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

          The same tactics are being used selectively against many adult/sex-related industries as well as gun dealers/stores and others the government considers "unsavory" for whatever political/ideological/moral/financial/religious reasons they choose.

          It was bad under Obama, it's bad under Trump. This should not be partisan at all. If the Rule of Law were still a thing in the US, those responsible would be seeing a prison cell, but sadly... .

          Strat

          • It has little to do with disputed CC charges.

            It has everything to do with government pressure applied to banks/CC companies to remove the ability to perform financial transactions from certain select legal businesses/individuals without due process

            From your link 'companies believed to be at higher risk for fraud and money laundering.'
            I'm pretty sure that fraud and money laundering aren't legal business...

            • From your link 'companies believed to be at higher risk for fraud and money laundering.'
              I'm pretty sure that fraud and money laundering aren't legal business...

              Those were the reasons given but they were not the only reasons.

              But the reasons are irrelevant to the fact that such threats by the federal government are blatantly unconstitutional as they attack legal businesses without any charges or due process involved. It is entirely unilateral with no judicial review or oversight nor authorized by any law or Act of Congress. The government cannot skirt the Constitution by using a monkey's paw.

              Strat

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • it's not nothing to do with moral policing.

          Actually it has plenty to do with moral policing. Credit card processors were single handedly implicated in the end of the beasiality porn industry in the USA even before *some* states passed laws banning the practice. Credit card processors have led some very targetted moral campaigns in the past. You're right in the general case that porn represents a high-risk to them, but within the industry they are very effective moral police.

        • by jythie ( 914043 )
          I have often heard how these restriction are valid because adult merchants are high risk, but I have never found any numbers to back this up.
        • it's not nothing to do with moral policing. Credit card transactions are effectively loans. In large parts of the world you have a legal right to dispute any charge on your card as a result. Adult content has a high percentage of disputes (probably from guys who's wives/girlfriends notice the charge). Even if you can prove the charge is valid it's still expensive to do so. Hence why nobody wants to be involved in it.

          With corporations always, always, always follow the money. Anything bigger than a leomonade stand is completely amoral.

          This is a great take.... and unfortunately it is just not correct.

          This move is the direct result of Operation Choke Point. [wikipedia.org]

          The US Federal government began threatening banks back in 2013 that if they did business with disfavored industries, they risked being taken down by the Feds. It is often sold as being about "money laundering", but it targeted legal business that were in disfavor with the administration like firearms dealers, check cashing services and payday lenders. Along with this other groups w

      • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @12:12PM (#56875176)
        It's not always the payment processors that are pushing for this directly. There are often laws put in place designed to crack down on certain behaviors (see Craigslist closing down their personals section recently) and payment services are required to abide by them. If the laws are vaguely defined then the processors are going to be more strict than necessary because running afoul of law even once is nightmare for them.

        Think of it this way. If I'm a payment processor I get paid by processing payments. I really don't care if those are for groceries, commissioned artworks, illicit drugs, or prostitutes. I get paid either way and it's in my best interest to process as many payments as possible. However, the government isn't powerful enough to be able to even put a dent in behavior it doesn't like and can't even begin to unilaterally enforce it. So they make laws that make processing payments for certain things illegal. It's much easier for them to go after me than it is hundreds of people buying drugs, so it's in my interest to not let anyone pay for anything that looks like illegal drugs using my system even if that means I inadvertently prevent some hippies from buying some herbal tea that's in no way illegal from time to time. You can still get that without laws (say that 90% of my customers are Mormons and don't want me to process payments for coffee) but it's rare.

        And even though I disagree with the new age puritanism that's making the rounds, I don't think it's my right to tell a company that they can't give in to pressure from their customers if they want to. If they think keeping the 90% Mormon customers at the expense of losing the other 10% is better than potentially losing a good chunk of 90% of their customers, that's their own business decision. If it's a bad business move, they'll fail and get replaced by a company that does a better job of serving consumers.
        • Well, that all sounds good, until you realize that those laws don't actually push them to do this at all. They just don't want their name on the document subpoena, because they communicate with the world in such a way that nobody believes anything they say, and if they're asked about they'll put their foot in their mouth by default because their communications are all stuffed full of horseshit by policy.

          That's the real reason, because their PR drones can't answer a question about an investigation without m

    • Lol, no they just don't like the publicity of being called into an investigation for some sort of sex trafficking that has used their service. And the lines between good and bad sex are so blurred they have taken the path they've taken.

    • by jythie ( 914043 )
      Now? Using payment processors as a tool in morality crusading has been going on since at least the 70s. If you can't make something illegal, pressure the banks to cut off funds.. pretty time honored. And as new systems get larger they get the attention of crusaders and the same pressure gets put on them.
  • Only in America (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @11:33AM (#56875048)

    is "implied nudity" a reason to ban something but banning weapons that enable you to massacre a crowd from a quarter of a mile away is controversial.

    • Re:Only in America (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01, 2018 @12:00PM (#56875136)

      “If you suck on a tit the movie gets an R rating. If you hack the tit off with an axe it will be PG.”

    • It's always been this way. When Americans talk about "morals", they're talking about sex, but violence is perfectly okay.
  • by hyades1 ( 1149581 ) <hyades1@hotmail.com> on Sunday July 01, 2018 @11:34AM (#56875052)

    Since Patreon takes a slice of the pie, it would be nice to see how happy they'd be if everybody who had material even a little bit suggestive took their projects to a new site that dealt unabashedly with porn. Such a site would be well-advised to reserve an area for head-to-head competition with Patreon for family friendly projects. I'll leave the social dynamics of the situation for another day, but I think we can all agree that the people most interested in pornography are sometimes the same ones who would love to have an excuse for "accidentally" straying into the wrong area.

    Call the site "Pudtreon" or something.

  • Big opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Sunday July 01, 2018 @12:09PM (#56875170)

    The same thing is happening to firearms dealers doing online sales (which have all the same safeguards and background checks as in-person sales — and actually more traceability because credit card sales are more traceable than cash sales).

    Presumably these payment processors won't allow legal marijuana sales either. The realm of socially disapproved behavior grows larger every day.

    This creates a big, expanding opportunity for a payment processor who won't bow to the Twitter mobs and their blacklists and witch hunts.

    • You can't just process payments on a wish and prayer, though. How does the money eventually move? Existing payment processors are owned by banking conglomerates, and banks already have agreements to move money.

      It is easy to imagine making a new user-facing part, or imagining what your merchant policies would be, but how does the money get from the consumer to the merchant? Does the consumer have to mail you dollar bills, or what? Maybe they mail you a check or money order in advance, and then you mail the m

    • Presumably these payment processors won't allow legal marijuana sales either. The realm of socially disapproved behavior grows larger every day.

      Interesting thought process you have there. You presume something based on nothing more that hot air, then proceed to form a conclusion based on that presumption that has no basis in reality.?
      I used to work in a bank and I can assure that bankers have no morals. Every decision made in a bank is about money or the risks of losing that money. This has nothing do with any perceived moral crusade, it is merely a higher risk of fraud which might coast a bank exec his/her bonus. If porn and marijuana is being ta

      • by Kohath ( 38547 )

        Interesting thought process you have there. You presume something based on nothing more that hot air, then proceed to form a conclusion based on that presumption that has no basis in reality.?

        Yeah, predicting the future is more or less always like that because no one knows the future.

  • ... FTA:

    According to a Patreon blog about creator fees, these partners include Stripe and PayPal (which has a history of refusing to serve sex workers), but the pressure to turn sex workers away comes from major banking networks.

    It's the payment partners .

    Any objections should be addressed to those payment partners.

    Patreon just wants to make a buck.

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