Sorry, You Can’t Fund Your Fetish Porn Site on Patreon Anymore

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Terebonkoff Game Studios is an ‘Adult Games’ channel on Patreon. Terebonkoff gets to stay, though more conventional porn as well as ‘fringe adult’ material is out.

Patreon is taking more forceful action against NSFW and pornographic content.  That includes a range of accounts that involve porn sites, webcams, and ‘fringe adult’ activity.

At a certain stage, this stops being fun for Patreon.  Who knows, maybe it stops being fun for any great internet idea that suddenly gets huge.

Just last week, Patreon started cracking down on a range of adult content.  Prior to this point, the site simply flagged NSFW content and kept it out of its main search results.  After all, who cares if you want to fund a sex-focused creator, right?

Well, it now looks like Patreon has to care.

And a quick look at their updated guidelines offers a clue as to why.  Instead of artistic endeavors like erotic illustrations and nude photography, it looks like Patreon’s accounts are getting hijacked by things like bestiality, snuff, and even child pornography.

Thanks, internet.

Patreon has already been shutting down those darker elements.  But now, anything involving payment for creating sexual content is also subject to termination.  So, go fund your porn site somewhere else.   And that includes financing an adult website, or paying for access to an x-rated webcam.

Here’s where Patreon’s updated Community Guidelines have been updated on adult content.

You cannot sell pornographic material or arrange sexual service(s) as a reward for your patrons. 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.

Unfortunately, these are the other types of provisions Patreon also has include:

We have zero tolerance when it comes to the glorification of sexual violence which includes bestiality, rape, and child exploitation (i.e., sexualized depiction of minors). This is true for illustrated, animated, or any other type of content. Patreon reserves the right to review and remove accounts that may violate this guideline. As a strong commitment to child safety, we will work with law enforcement whenever we come across child exploitation.

We also do not allow other fringe sexual fetish content, such as incest, necrophilia, or fetish content that is hard to distinguish from non-consensual sex.

So yeah, there’s a team at Patreon that sees all this stuff — then has to go home and act normal.

But it still appears that certain types of adult content are acceptable.  Patreon only asks that owners tag their content, with access restricted to donors only.  Garden-variety nudity, eroticism and even graphic violence still seem game — but subject to heightened monitoring.

We ask creators to flag themselves as Adult Content if they create any content that has mature themes such as sexuality or graphic violence. When you are flagged as Adult Content your page is removed from our search. We also require that all public content on your page be appropriate for all audiences. Content with mature themes must be marked as a patron-only post.

So where’s the line?

That sounds like the tricky part moving forward.  For example, ‘Terebonkoff Game Studios’ has a Patreon account focused on x-rated, 18+ games.  So what’s the difference between that and a more traditional porn site?

Engadget got a rather blurry answer from the funding platform when they asked about distinctions.  But the company seems ready to adjudicate borderline sites.  “Our Trust and Safety team will work with creators to moderate their content,” Engadget learned after discussing matters with the company’s legal head Colin Sullivan.

“There will also be an appeals process, and users will have personal guidance from a Patreon employee to help them get their page reinstated.”

But of course, some accounts are far easier to nix than others.  And from now on, the bad stuff has definitely gotta go.  All of which opens a rich entrepreneurial opportunity for — you guessed it — the ‘Patreon of Porn’.