Roadblock update and rant... (Patreon)

Hello there!

I  imagined this post in a lot of ways: a long rant; whining mess; educated interpretation of facts…

I’ll put this simple: I’m between a rock and a hard place. I need Patreon to survive, but I cannot continue posting or financing my current (nsfw) art here due to the new clauses on the policy rules - forward referred to as DA RULES.

DA RULES now define humans as “depictions of real humans as well as photorealistic representations of humans including those that were computer - or artificial intelligence - generated”. By this, DAZ 3D, Blender and other 3d rendering softwares capable of generating photorealistic humans are included. All rules referring to humans now apply to my work, therefore:

What can I continue posting by DA RULES:

• Pin ups showing nudity;
• Transformation sequences and stories with some nudity shown;
• Graphic stories (‘comics’) with plots not revolving on hanky panky;

What I cannot show and will have to remove:

• Pin-ups focusing on main and secondary sexual gonads areas;
• Adult toys in use or suggested in use;
• Aroused characters (includes wetness);
• Hanky panky straight or same gender.
• Adults remotely resembling underaged (disclaimers are seen as none abiders).

What I can add to my work:

• Non visual works (ie writing) is more lenient, but have some rules too;
• Hand drawn non realistic cartoons (as long as they do not hanky panky).

This is the situation. I haven’t explored other ways to monetize my works, yet. Patreon is not the only platform updating terms of service and I’ve been procrastinating on reading all the legalese being sent to my inbox since march 1st.

I thank you for your support, paid or otherwise, and I highly recommend all patrons to download all the content that  you have the right to because I will remove it by the end of the month to comply with DA RULES.

I haven’t decided, yet, what I am going to offer April onwards on Patreon, so all tiers will remain hidden while I come up with a new value proposal. If you want to jump out and stop supporting me here, no hard feelings, just gratefulness for your generosity.

If you have a suggestion on what kind of content you would like to see from me here that is DA RULES compliant, please leave a comment. All ideas are welcome.

Rant - skip if you have better things to do and thanks for reading until now.

Some curious things I found after reading Patreon’s many rules and news posts:

• Animated Furries are almost exempt from the 18+ human related art rules - second bullet point of permitted art under bestiality. 
• Patreon updates and changes their rules every 3 to 4 months! - check news.patreon.com blog posts and you can confirm. 
• As I suspected, Patreon uses automated tools to enforce rules, it also suggests fans and patrons to report violations from creators - transparency report 2023. 
• Adult artists were the second most reported non DA RULES compliant group, only behind teen safety - also transparency report 2023.
• Fan art is not banned from patreon, even though it is illegal to make money from other’s copyrighted intellectual property - just type fanart onto a find a creator search, lots of creators do it.

Some things I have to praise about Patreon, not to sound a moaning myrtle:

• Journalists are well protected under DA RULES - it is good to see that there are exceptions on many bullet points to allow journalists to do their jobs and be paid for it.
• It is very easy to get your money, especially if you are an US citizen - Paypal is not the only withdrawal method and much of the red tape and taxes are pre-filled by patreon.
• Every rule is easy to access - you can find every rule about everything easily and is not under a very hard legalese.

Even though my experience with Patreon has gotten worse over the years with the constant rule changing, interface re-designs, terms change and trying to turn it into a social network-esk site; I still think that this is a good idea. I just think they lost their focus and goal - a place where a creator can monetize his creations.

Thank you for reading. Let me know if you like this kind of analytic rant, I might do this more often on other topics.

Rant Over.