On the Eve of Christmas Tree (Patreon)

Seasons’ Greetings to all and sundry, I write this on the morning just before I’m due to depart for the week. In the small hours of the night (UK time), Patreon emailed me directly. Fret not though, it’s nothing too ominous. But as I’ve been told I’m one of very few people who actually notify their Patrons of these things, I might as well keep up the tradition.

First off is an update to their privacy policy, which includes a California-only “Right to Be Deleted” thing (officially known as the California Consumer Privacy Act) that comes into effect New Year’s Day.  I vaguely remember a very similar proposal, The Right to be Forgotten, being a thing a few years ago over here in Europe. In short, a Spanish man who had fallen into debt in 1998 argued that because Google searches kept throwing up his name in direct relation to that one incident, it was ruining his reputation and future business prospects long after he was back in the black.  He actually won and EU data protection laws changed since then but paradoxically, the Spanish man is now more remembered than ever.

The second topic I want to raise is an extension to their Terms of Service. This is where things get a bit tricky. To summarise two points of personal interest in the updated Benefits Guidelines:

•  No raffles (not surprising considering how much trouble there was earlier in the year regarding certain video games and loot boxes… or “surprise mechanics”, and the hurried removal of such in some places following governmental pressure) This puts some Content Creators who freely advertise raffles on social media like Twitter and Instagram in an interesting position. I’m OK though --- my Polls don’t just benefit one person and the reward is given out to everyone (pledge allowing) regardless.

• No smut, here, there or anywhere - this is the tricky one because I recently heard from someone who got into trouble on Patreon for posting a link up to his Vimeo account, and they just recently wielded the ban hammer on … stimulating content of a weighty nature, if you know what I mean.  And I’ve heard of a few people who got suspended or kicked off Patreon for things they’ve done or said elsewhere, some of it political, some of it… kind of dodgy…
   

This rather reflects an ongoing issue where a lot of the social media sites – Instagram, YouTube, Twitter – are starting to take a sterner approach to some things. YouTuber friends of mine are somewhat panicking about the COPPA thing (satirised with gallows’ humour here) and Twitter are implementing changes come New Year’s Day too. So I’m not sure what’s going to happen… especially since I might be in danger…

So far, it seems that they’re going on a “inform us of any misdeeds” policy, as highlighted here.  And given positive press articles like this, and the amount of money raised from Patrons and Patreon Content Creators this past year,  I’m sure that they don’t want to raise too much of a stink should someone popular be deleted or something.

So to be direct, I’m begging not to be 🐀 on. I’m only still able to operate thanks to the kindness of you Patrons, both financially and well, kinda-sortta socially? Truly, madly, deeply, thank you so much as always. If there’s any beef or anything, talk to me – we can sort it out.

And that’s about it. No price changes, no fee changes (as far as I’m aware), and the content won’t change when I come back at the end of this week; I’ll just get straight to work on January’s stuff since by then, it’ll only be a few days until 2020 begins anyway.

I know this is a bit of a dicey topic so if you don’t want to leave any comments here, you can Direct Message me up on Twitter at Yohkyle, or raise it in the Discord Server (whose channel I keep forgetting how to link --- halp), or you can hit me up on Discord. I *do* have a Telegram but I dunno how make a Telegram group, and I don’t know if those are actually effective or not. Oh and lastly, you can Message me here.

And that’s it. Sorry that this came out of nowhere just before Christmas.

Thank you, thank you, thank you again for everything, especially those with the kind words of support on the last journal entry – you don’t know how much it meant to hear words of conviction from outside my own head.

🎄 Merry Christmas. 🎄

‘Kam