Patreon and certain kinds of NSFW content

A lot of news has been floating around this past month regarding things like hypno content being banned on Patreon.

As I've mentioned before, I do what I can to keep in contact with Patreon themselves, and discussed this problem in their official server (the discussion actually went on for a few days, with a few people who had even worked for payment processors in the past chiming in).

The problem is, these policies aren't Patreon's at all. These kind of policies come from payment processors and are forced upon platforms. There's basically three options:

• Use high risk processors which can only handle a limited volume of payments. Probably get shut down.
• Operate anyway and defy the payment processors, and probably get shut down.
• Bend to the processors and enforce what they're required to while trying to negotiate with them / wait for the industry to change.

The first knee-jerk reaction when stuff like this happens is "Go to Subscribestar!" Subscribestar is going to have the exact same problems, and if they haven't yet it's only because they're too small to be subject to scrutiny. (Fun fact: even pornhub doesn't allow you to monetize anything with the word 'hypno' in it.)

For the record, Patreon has a history of fighting and negotiating with them to lax things up. This is why Paypal can be used on NSFW pages now--originally it could not. This also is likely why they moved their payment processor to the EU, because the laws regarding NSFW content are slightly more lax there. (Note that this is an assumption, there's no confirmation of this being the reason.)

A REALLY good explanation was provided by u/steve_gutenberg over on Reddit. 

Additionally, on the forums, staff reached out to me and gave an explanation that stuff that has clear consent is allowed. Everything is assessed on a case-by-case basis, and if there's a violation, as has been the policy for a while now, they work with the creator to resolve it. (Again, this is why the introduction of page suspensions were very important, because before the only option was to delete a page.) Patreon does have the stance of stuff promoting lack of consent shouldn't be allowed, and I can't fault them for that--that's been their policy for an incredibly long time, and they do acknowledge that things like hypnosis can require a bit of assessment to sort out.

My page is not in any danger at all. I have a variety of content, and I do hypno stuff only on the occasion. I don't intend to change what I do, but I may adjust how or where it's presented. Staff does know that people are very unhappy about this matter, but a lot of peoples' first reaction is to jump ship, not knowing the true nature of the problem.