
An Open Letter to Patreon - liararoux
http://www.openlettertopatreon.com
======
arkades
Does anyone else recollect the expression “no one owes you a business model”?

There’s many reasons Patreon should want to avoid being a porn payments
processor. Blame American Puritanism or whatever, but that’s the milieu in
which they operate. They don’t owe it to anyone to bear excess risk just so
that someone else can have a profitable hustle at their expense.

If this is such a big issue for the LGBT community Fund a goddamn KS to make a
porn-friendly Patreon clone. Or just to Fund starting a porn-friendly payments
processor. If the model is profitable rather than a charitable infusion by the
processor, then it’ll be good for everyone, wont it?

~~~
falcolas
If you explicitly court particular industry (amateur/niche porn) to build out
your own business model, yeah, I think you do owe those businesses a business
model. Perhaps not legally, but morally.

> Fund a goddamn KS to make a porn-friendly Patreon clone

Pretty sure you can't KS an adult business (which such a clone would be
considered). That's part of the problem. Nobody wants to touch that industry
once they become "respectable".

~~~
arkades
I’ve seen no evidence that they have actively courted that niche, though. As
far as I can see, they’ve had a policy of benign neglect - which is far from
the same thing.

~~~
falcolas
If you make the charitable assumption that the letter's writers are not lying,
this relationship is clearly spelled out at the top of the second paragraph:

> Over the last couple years we have been courted by you, worked closely with
> you on promotion, creation, and even website features, and have been assured
> by you that Patreon was a home for all types of creators – including those
> that make adult content.

~~~
arkades
Without accusing anyone of lying at all, the letter writer goes out of their
way to make it seem like the LGBT community, adult content community, and porn
community are the same thing, and they’re representing all 3. I don’t know
which of these Patreon has courted, though, or how much. To quote,

“However, there has always been an issue with your stance on “porn” versus
“adult content.” This stance has never been clear and is reminiscent of the
phrase “I know it when I see it”, most infamously used in 1964 by Supreme
Court Justice Potter Stewart to describe his threshold test for obscenity.
This is an outdated, legally unclear, and importantly, extremely problematic
view of adult media.”

So, to Patreon, this doesn’t seem to be a distinction without a difference. I
happen to agree: an artistic nude is adult content, but isn’t the same adult
content as a blowjob video. Even if no one is lying, I have no trouble reading
that letter as “you courted and reassured us (LGBT, adult content), and now
you’re abandoning us (pornographers)”. Which doesn’t require deceit - I’m sure
there’s overlap and gray areas. But it doesn’t require Patreon to be playing
dirty either.

------
kome
American puritanism is the problem. I have enough of those American companies
arbitrarily deciding that a nipple is an obscene thing. But how to fight back
this form of cultural imperialism?

~~~
corobo
I doubt that. Chargebacks are the problem. As soon as you mention to a payment
processor that you might be taking for adult content they drop you like a hot
brick.

~~~
netsharc
And why is the payment processor doing that? Because they're afraid of the
government. Why? Because the government doesn't like boobies. Why?
Puritanism...

~~~
corobo
I said why in the sentence before the one you ran off with. Because they get
higher than usual chargebacks.

This is due to the "I shouldn't have spent money on that" feeling when the
user is done with the service. You'll also have fraudulent cards because
there's no physical location they need to order things to to test that the
card works. Probably an aspect of underaged users using parents cards due to
the nature of the content and a cherry on top in the form of money laundering
as the services allows the user to receive money.

As it's a service not goods it's much more easy to chargeback. I'd imagine
places that sell adult products have less of an issue, because they have proof
of goods.

~~~
Certhas
So charge them a slightly higher fee to account for that.

Your reasoning that that in itself would be sufficient to refuse service does
not hold up.

~~~
corobo
The processors that allow "high risk" payments do charge a higher fee. I
wouldn't call it "slightly higher" though, it was prohibitively expensive for
the service I was trying to set up. In a sister thread on this subject on
Reddit someone suggested using Bitcoin as an alternative, which I somewhat
regret not considering at the time.

To clarify also it's not my reasoning. Adult content is referenced in the
Terms of Service for all payment processors, whether they allow it or not. See
Stripe for an example[1]

[1] [https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited-businesses#ip-
infringement-...](https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited-businesses#ip-infringement-
regulated-or-illegal-products-and-services)

~~~
Certhas
I understand, I simply don't believe that this is a rational decision due to
risk assessment. I believe that that is just an excuse. Or rather, that a high
amount of the risk involved is not due to customer behaviour, but due to
potential pressure from self appointed guardians of morality. As part of this
discussion elsewhere people were linking again to an old engadget article
about these practices, which in turn linked to this court opinion, which is
well worth reading:

[http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-
bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Disp...](http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-
bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2015/D11-30/C:15-3047:J:Posner:aut:T:fnOp:N:1663542:S:0)

Here is the engadget article:

[https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-
ba...](https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-bankings-war-
on-the-sex-industry/)

I think strong regulations, something like: Visa/Stripe/PayPal/Amazon have to
service every business that is not illegal, would also help these companies
against such "moral guardianship". They don't have to look like they are
defending the rights of perverts to their other customers.

------
erlend_sh
There’s a major opportunity for competition here. A complete open source stack
for what Patreon does is already available as free open source software:

[https://github.com/opencollective](https://github.com/opencollective)

A sex-positive alternative to Patreon could be up and running within a month.
A lone developer could make a viable side-business for them self living off
the 10% fee + having their own collection project. This would be good for the
OpenCollective org as well, as this would bring more contributors to their
open source ecosystem, further strengthening their platform.

The tricky part will be finding a payment gateway that doesn’t prohibit adult
content. Yes, cryprocurrencies would also help here, but a lot of people still
just want to use their credit cards.

P.S. For the record I think Patreon is a great service, but I don't think they
need nor should be the only "recurring payments platform" available.

~~~
aargh_aargh
The benefit is not in the software or service per se. It's in the network
effect the existing service already has.

~~~
kaffee
I agree with @erlend_sh. Patreon _does not_ have much in the way of a network.
Its recommendations (if you like this, you'll like that) are typically awful.
They're so bad in fact, that I suspect there's some sort of legal/liability
constraint.

Right now Patreon is a remarkably dumb system with really high fees.

That there isn't a serious alternative already makes me suspect that this is
isn't a really high profit site in the first place. It could be that dealing
with the NSFW creators is really a bid to increase the profit of the site
beyond some modest baseline.

Of course this pessimistic conclusion suggests the reason why there isn't a
bitcoin-based competitor either. The legal issues and the fees are just too
high to attract investment.

~~~
Torgo
Patreon had a competitor, Subbable, which acquired a bunch of Youtube stars
before Patreon bought them.

>bitcoin-based competitor

The problem here is that bitoin is push payment rather than pull, and reducing
friction is critical to a subscription system. Bitcoin would require a user
taking action every single month to pay, and on time.

------
Xeoncross
> "Not only that, the most vulnerable among us – disproportionately queer,
> trans, disabled, people of color and those whose first language is not
> English – are literally scared for our lives. "

The writer uses "people of color" and "whose first language is not English" to
build a case for the author's own desire. The author doesn't truly serve in
the interests of the black community, immigrants or any of these groups they
are name-dropping.

I guess, every one's doing it though. _Think of the children!_

~~~
icebraining
Which writer? There are 100 initial signers to the letter.

~~~
Xeoncross
You can have many people who mostly agree with or support you, but would never
have written as you did. All 100 signers did not write the post.

~~~
icebraining
Right, but you didn't just say the author wasn't a person of color or
homeless; you also, and more importantly, said the author doesn't serve their
interest and is just using them. And for that claim, whether the signatories
includes people of the mentioned group(s) is relevant, because clearly they
felt it was serving their interests.

------
noobermin
The answer is we need competition. These "curated, private commons" from
amazon to twitter to youtube to facebook to ebay to all of the above cannot
and should not replace the free market, which they _are_ trying to do. What is
happening here is exactly why we decided Trusts were a bad thing back in the
day, although these are "smaller" companies, one point of failure can mean
death for a host of consumers.

That or regulation. One or the other.

~~~
sky_rw
The irony here being that to many content creators, Patreon WAS seen as the
competition to reliance on Youtube ad revenue. Facing demonetization due to
politically incorrect content they switched business models to rely on Patreon
subscriptions. Now Patreon is levying the PC hammer on many of the same
people.

------
token_throwaway
This letter reflects very poorly on the writer(s). You would think Patreon is
the difference between life and death for them (they basically say as much).
You would think that without Patreon, nobody would be interested in their
creations. I'm sorry but -wow-. You've got other ways to collect payments from
people who support your work... and if you have a fanbase already, I'm not
sure where the problem lies in moving off the platform. In fact, that would
send a much stronger message to Patreon, at which point the financial and
traffic hit would probably cause someone up the line to reconsider their
position. And if not, better for both parties anyway.

At the end of the day, Patreon is a private company that owes nothing to
anybody except its shareholders. And I don't blame them for implementing
subjective NSFW filters, that is their prerogative, and they didn't set out to
create a camshow site at the end of the day.

Adults whinging is becoming the white noise of the internet.

~~~
Certhas
What are the other ways to collect payments? Paypal? Nope [1]. Stripe? Nope
[2].

See the quote I posted here about someone who tried:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15551817)

Generally it's not rare to see websites restrict their content not because its
illegal, but because it's impossible to collect payment for any of your
content, if some of your content is deemed unacceptable by VISA/Mastercard,
etc...

And patreon marketed itself to content producers specifically as not following
the paypal/stripe example.

[1] [https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/what-is-
paypal%E2...](https://www.paypal.com/us/selfhelp/article/what-is-
paypal%E2%80%99s-policy-on-transactions-that-involve-sexually-oriented-goods-
and-services-faq569)

[2] [https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-
businesses](https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses)

~~~
token_throwaway
Sage? GoCardless? Coinbase? Etsy? A platform that pays out specifically for
nsfw content (like pornhub)? Hatreon, as many have mentioned?

If no available alternatives suit, and there is a big demand for something
different, someone passionate should go build it and get rich! And if there
isn't a big demand for it, so be it! Not everyone gets to have a liveable
salary from writing furry fanfic porn, c'est la vie. The entitlement in the
letter really bothers me.

~~~
angus-prune
The problem is taking payment. The credit card companies don't allow most of
this content and have been known to pressure payment processors to drop
specific clients, with the threat of shutting down the entire company.

Visa/Mastercard have a de facto monopoly on online payments, and if they block
you from taking payment online then you are out of luck.

I've known multiple people who have run adult websites or even tried to launch
the adult-specific KS-clone suggested and taking payment is the constant
issue.

------
_Codemonkeyism
Doesn't make a lot of sense

1\. "Your fuzzy position on “adult content” vs. “porn” gives you the freedom
to discriminate at will. And it makes content creators live in fear of that
discrimination, itself leading to self censorship of important viewpoints."

2\. "[...] we also must listen to and represent those who simply make porn.
Who want to be creative with their porn, yes, but most importantly want to be
self directed."

So it's not about the fuzzy position of Patreon but about disallowing porn it
seems.

~~~
csydas
Elsewhere in the letter it is described that Patreon employees had explicitly
given approval for pornographic Patreon accounts, only to have this retracted
later.

I do feel that their point gets lost in the letter, but ultimately their
complaint is simple; there's a niche market and niche opportunities for their
specific groups to make pornography for their target audience, and very few
means for receiving payment. Patreon previously was a good work-around for the
issues with many payment processors refusing to allow pornography, but by
being a Patreon campaign, they could avoid this. The letter signees were under
the impression that Patreon was okay with this, but now Patreon is saying they
are not.

If the above is accurate, then I really get why they're confused and
frustrated. I feel they're presenting things in reverse order or taking too
long to get to the core point (they want to make porn as they had before
without being penalized by payment processors), and Patreon was a solution
that made everyone happy, though apparently something changed for Patreon.

------
UniHacker
Lol, so now banning pornographers from your site equals to discriminating
against the lgbtquerty community.

~~~
netsharc
I have nothing against erotica/porn and nothing against LBGT _, but yeah, the
open letter writer seems to be using "Why won't you think of the LBGT_
community?" line as a talking point, probably because accusing a company of
being anti-gay is an effective weapon nowadays... somehow, saying more of this
community uses their sexuality to make money (through Patreon) makes me feel
"I'm sure the LGBT* accountants and bus drivers would disagree with this..."

~~~
Certhas
Hey, most porn out there is straight. In fact it's a multi-billion dollar
industry. Really shows how the straight community uses their sexuality to make
money, doesn't it?

If you don't fit the target audience of the porn industry, you have to look
elsewhere, like Patreon. The mainstream porn business does not cater to
everyone. That's fine. The queer market is much smaller. But it also means its
over-represented on platforms like Patreon, and thus particularly hit by this
change.

So what exactly do you take issue with?

~~~
Myrmornis
See the comment by "nippples" above:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15548719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15548719)

------
Majestic121
I agree with the overall point of shady limitations between porn and adult
content leading to discrimination, but this kind of self-victimization :

> Not only that, the most vulnerable among us – disproportionately queer,
> trans, disabled, people of color and those whose first language is not
> English – are literally scared for our lives.

Hurts the whole speech.

Is it possible to have this (valid and important) debate without emotional
blackmail ?

~~~
Xylakant
I fail to understand what's your issue with this. Are you questioning that the
queer, trans, disabled, PoC are in a weaker (and often precarious) position
than the cis white (male)? Or is it emotional blackmail to point out that a
change (once again) hits hardest for the people that are in a weak position?
Isn't it considered common decency to keep in mind the needs of the people
that are weaker than us? That might just barely make a living and that don't
have the time and energy to make their voice heard?

I consider that debate important preciously because it hits the marginalized
people worst. I can make my living where I choose (and buy my adult content
where I wish to and as a male, I'm probable considered a "proper male" if I
do). Those people can't as easily as I.

~~~
vacri
Why are demographics not defined by their sexuality (disabled, PoC, english-
second-language) more likely to make sexual/nudity content, and hence be more
affected by this issue?

I'm big on egalitarianism, but I'm not keen on co-opting unrelated groups in
order to make your case sound more important.

~~~
icebraining
The letter doesn't say they are more likely to make such content, but that the
negative effects are more harmful to people who are already more vulnerable.

~~~
vacri
The whole first paragraph is completely overbearing. "Quick, pull in every
non-mainstream group we can think of, and then describe them all as
_literally_ in fear of death from an ambiguous policy about fringe content.
Oh, and of course _all_ these people rent off landlords so nasty that they
won't accept a _single_ delayed rental payment and they'll end up homeless if
that happens". It's completely indefensible hyperbole.

------
gumby
> As journalist Violet Blue noted, “We are barred from Facebook, Instagram,
> Paypal, MailChimp, WordPress.org, Squarespace, Square, Kickstarter, Chase,
> Snapchat, AdWords.. Add that Tumblr and other sites make us unfindable.”

Which is how Congress and various AG want it. There's a two pronged attack
which is designed to appeal to a small, vocal, minority:

\- Banks and credit card companies get threatened with some regulation
(limitation on interest rates or fees, for example). They negotiate and say
"how about we crack down on those damned pornographers / terrorists/other out
group and you leave us alone?"

\- Newspapers, web sites, etc get threatened with some regulation (profits,
speech, loss of section 230 protection for example). They negotiate and say
"how about we crack down on those damned pornographers / terrorists/other out
group and you leave us alone?"

And while this sounds like tit-for-tat, the level of threat even a large
company like Facebook faces is existential. Look at what happened to Qwest CEO
Joe Nacchio (in his case it wasn't a so-called "morals" issue: he refused to
allow his company to participate in a government illegal surveillance scheme
and was sent to jail on trumped-up charges).

This works very well for all concerned: Congress/AG can rely on the votes and
quiet of small block the so-called "moral" extremists; companies can continue
to exist and a different, not quite as small block of typically
underprivileged people gets screwed.

Oh yeah, not so good for that last group. This all sounds cynical, but you can
see from the real world that it's not: By going after these so-called "moral"
cases, we make things a lot worse:

\- those who really _are_ being exploited are hard to find (police used to use
Backpage to find human trafficking -- oops, sorry no more)

\- Those who are not being exploitative are shut out by regulation, which is
economically and socially destructive to providers, consumers and the rest of
the community.

As with the "war on drugs", there is no effort to address actual problems;
it's use of the taxpayer's dollar to secure votes.

(AG = Attornies General)

------
flotillo
What does being " _queer, trans, disabled, people of color_ [or] _those whose
first language is not English_ " have to do with selling pornography for tips?

Not quite sure why this letter conflates the two.

Anyway, can't they use some service other than Patreon? For example, there are
already quite a lot of 'camwhore' sites around that seem to be doing just
fine.

------
ineednoprocrast
I heard a story a while ago about how marajuana-related companies in colorado
formed some financial institution in order to deal with being blocked out of
the wider financial ecosystem.

The piece of the puzzle I don't understand yet is why credit card processors
appear to have taken it upon themselves to be the moral police. They could
very easily make the argument that the use of money transferred isn't their
problem. That seems to have worked for the NRA. Why did they get into the
business of kinda-sorta-but-not-really representing the police?

~~~
Mz
It has absolutely nothing at all to do with being _the moral police_ and
everything to do with living in fear of serious, potentially business-killing
consequences for failing to comply with federal laws, rules and regulations.

------
gkya
I see quite a bit of signatures there. Create your own Patreon. It needs not
be porn or erotica specific, but it should not be that hard to build a similar
service with more ample freedoms to content creators. And given most of these
people have YouTube channels and whatnot, it shouldn't be that hard to get at
least a good portion of the patrons to switch over to your new service.

Companies will do all that's possible to avoid getting in trouble. It's their
bread and butter after all. Also, companies come, companies go. Never depend
on them, especially for your livelihood. Form an NGO and build your tool,
maybe in a more progressive European country.

Also, I bet if Patreon could include adult w/o negative consequences, they
would. After all it's more income. But probably they're bound by external
stuff (companies whose services they use, some laws, etc.), and those are to
attack. I can be 100% behind asking for a legislation to disallow excluding
any sectors or groups from using your services as a company, but trying to
coerce a company this way, no.

------
Melchizedek
Hatreon is an alternative that has no speech policing.

~~~
corobo
It's a good idea with an awful name on it. My first flash thought was a place
for funding hate. It did click a moment later that it's a play on the Patreon
name more "I hate Patreon" but it just feels.. wrong.

~~~
badlucklottery
>My first flash thought was a place for funding hate.

That's unfortunately not a bad guess. Go check out some of their "featured
creators". It's pretty much the bottom of the hate speech barrel.

~~~
corobo
Ah so it suffers from (or targets) the reddit->voat problem where a userbase
is comprised solely of those rejected from the normal site[].

[] Please forgive the use of the word normal, I couldn't think of a better
word. "Default site" or maybe "usual site" might work better

~~~
JCharante
What's wrong with normal? The more popular site is the normal one when it
comes to finding content creators. Hatrons or voaters aren't going to be
triggered by the use of the word "normal".

~~~
corobo
Peoples' triggerings aren't my concern, my concern is not conveying what I
mean accurately and getting bogged down in the nitty gritty of how I say
things rather than what I'm saying

------
pjc50
It's interesting that there are two basic HN responses to content
restrictions:

\- "companies have a right to control their platform"

\- demands for freedom of all speech everywhere

.. but this time those are both very far down the thread and instead we're
having a "I don't like your tone" discussion.

~~~
thescribe
To be fair the poor tone is the most notable part of the article, the rest is
just a short "We don't like what a private company is doing"

------
Tira
It's true that the letter doesn't mention the hentai artists (erotic drawings)
that are getting purged right now. The ones I know Patreon's purged over the
past few days had no connection to LGBT+.

However, niche hentai artists have no power. They can't threaten a PR
disaster, they probably wouldn't be getting all this sympathy from the press.
If the very left-leaning Patreon staff won't show mercy to the LGBT+ adult
content creators everyone else is probably screwed.

As long as the rainbow flag pushes for rules that'll also save the other adult
content creators I don't mind them making this all about themselves.

I do wish they'd at least mention the hentai artists though, there's even
LGBT+ ones.

------
mathgenius
Spankcoin to the rescue! (maybe)

[https://ico.spankstream.com/](https://ico.spankstream.com/)

------
datahack
Porntreon? No seriously, they need competitors.

Too many whales, not enough fish.

------
_Codemonkeyism
Nice wording:

"just knowing that they want to create and entertain and that their skills lie
in a sexual area."

------
j_s
Well, the previous 'don't ask don't tell'-equivalent era lasted about a month
after their latest funding round. What a surprise!

------
pdeuchler
Another day, another technology that gained momentum thanks to adult content
abandoning that high risk/high cost demographic for less turbulent waters .

While I can strongly empathize with the stress and fear of losing one's
income, especially if one has gone down a precarious career route like adult
entertainment, the naïvete the authors demonstrate when talking about their
own industry is disturbing. Completely explaining away all the difficulties of
having a non insignificant portion of your business be driven by adult content
as "discrimination" shows a shocking lack of knowledge of how hard it is to
actually run a business with adult content... extraordinarily expensive
lawyers, exorbitant cc fees, expensive banking if you can even get it, time
consuming CYA reviews of material that almost always have to be done by an
expensive human, etc. etc. Not only do these content creators get all of this
for free, but they're subsidized by all of the non adult content on Patreon as
well! It was only a matter of time before the gravy train ended, and not
foreseeing/expecting this to happen makes me think these people should not be
running their own businesses, much less businesses with such a extremely high
risk profile.

All that said, seems like a business opportunity to start catering to this
demographic and providing all of the above. You probably won't be able to
compete with Patreon's white washed image or cache, and you'll definitely be
more expensive, but your content creators will be able to count on a steady
income. Or at least steady when compared to the rest of the adult industry.

Then again, if you want all of this pain but with none of the social stigma
they can always get into bitcoin.

~~~
gkya
> Another day, another technology that gained momentum thanks to adult content
> abandoning that high risk/high cost demographic for less turbulent waters .

Wut? I heard patreon via Crash Course, and the Greens are among the founders,
AFAIK. The main guy being a musician. It's only today that I know of an adult
community trying to make use of the service.

------
vortico
Patreon is a company, so the decision is financial. Disallowing adult content
kicks off many people who make them commission producing adult content, but
allowing them may prevent other content producers from chosing to use Patreon.
I really have no idea which group is larger in terms of commissions.

~~~
akerro
Setup another domain nsfw.patreon with the same authentication and shared
database, so most people won't see nsfw content there.

------
em3rgent0rdr
This is why we need self-hosted FOSS alternatives to Patron. There is
LiberaPay/GratisPay, but they still rely on payment processing...so need a
fully distributed p2p way to earn money, such as via block chain.

------
NHQ
I wonder how different things would be if sex work was decriminalized.

------
vduglued
An aside:

> Is it ok to specifically feature you and your Patreon in the "undersigned"
> section?

Even those signatories who said, "No", seem to be listed in the embedded form
responses sheet.

------
thedangler
Seems like a perfect opportunity to create a Patreon for adult only content.

~~~
Certhas
It's not like that hasn't been tried:

[https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-
ba...](https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-bankings-war-
on-the-sex-industry/)

"In 2012 TED speaker Cindy Gallop launched a crowdsourced porn site based on
her TED Talk, "Make Love Not Porn," which highlights unrealistic expectations
about porn sex. Gallop had raised $500,000 from an undisclosed angel investor,
but discovered her company "couldn't work with PayPal, couldn't work with
Amazon, couldn't work with Google Checkout, couldn't work with any of the main
merchant partner gateways."

Gallop said, "So, we thought, let's go back to Chase, we have a business
banking account there, let's apply for a commercial account. Unfortunately,
that application surfaced the nature of our business within higher levels at
Chase. And it resulted in a meeting with a more senior guy, who essentially
said to us, not only can we not give you a commercial account, but you now
need to close your business bank account and take your business away." "

------
FlorianOver
I once though about fickstarter.com (fick being the german word for fuck)...

------
Mz
The book _Mayflower Madame_ did a reasonably decent profile of some of the
inner workings of a call girl service. One thing that allows call girl
services to operate is that they do not charge for sex. They charge by the
hour for the woman's company.

While most clients expect sex, not all do. A few of their clients were gay men
who hired call girls to accompany them to social events, like large family
weddings. In some cases, they hired the same girl every time for the
appearance of a steady girlfriend. In at least one case, the family liked the
girl so much that the gay man was getting pressured to marry her. They had to
stage a tearful breakup.

The point of that story is that, if I were doing a sex based business, I would
go reread that book and see what takeaways I could come up with for how to do
this. It was such a classy business, some of her clients stopped seeing call
girls at other services in other cities when they traveled because it raised
their expectations for standards.

While I am sympathetic to the very real problems that the most fringe groups
have (gays, trans, people of color, etc) I believe strongly that asking
standards to be lowered to accommodate their personal challenges is the wrong
approach. Instead of saying that _we should be allowed to make money in spite
of not being cultured people who get the difference between porn and erotica_
, it would make more sense to seek to establish some means to effectively
educate people who want a business in this space, but aren't sophisticated
enough to readily navigate it.

There are reasons sex is a touchy subject with restrictions on it. _Free love_
climates only thrive in situations where you can largely eliminate serious
consequences. The Hippie Era was born of the creation of both reliable birth
control and antibiotics. It died due to AIDS.

One of the benefits of online sexual things is that no one will get either
pregnant or diseased from it. That doesn't automatically eliminate all
problems associated with sex.

I think we do need to get over our aversion to paying for sexual services.
But, I think we need to be careful in how we approach new standards and
solutions. A lot of people don't really think things through and then you
learn that X practice leads to very bad things by watching those bad things
unfold.

As an alternative or adjunct payment option:

This may not help some of these businesses, because Pay Pal's policies may not
be anymore sex-friendly than Patreon's, but you can do a Pay Pal tip jar or
Pay Pal payment system. Here are things I have written about making a tip jar:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/search?q=Tip+jar](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/search?q=Tip+jar)

That likely won't be a ton of money. There is likely room for improvement.

------
timthelion
As a white hetro male who consumes porn, as do %90 of us white hetro males do.
I do not understand how it can be "fine" and "modern" for us to watch porn.
But not "fine" and "modern" for the women who produce it to be paid for it.
Porn is one of the few products out there that provides real value, real
stress relief, and has no environmental or moral downsides.

Porn is better for the environment, animals rights, and, when sold
independently, workers rights than icecream. But no one bans the sale of
icecream.

Porn is better for the environment, the local economy, and workers rights than
the fidget spinners which are produced in China, but no one bans the sale of
fidget spinners.

Lets face it, as hetro males, the women who make our porn are providing real
value to us, and we should be ashamed that so few of us pay money that
actually goes their way.

~~~
whamlastxmas
There is a moral downside to porn. There's plenty that is uploaded without the
person's consent (sometimes by a bitter ex). There's also a lot of stories out
there of people being coerced and made uncomfortable to continue filming when
they didn't want to. I imagine this is the minority, but there's definitely
issues within the porn industry.

~~~
lmm
Patreon, where consumers have a direct relationship with individual creators,
would seem like the perfect way to avoid those issues though.

~~~
klipt
What if Patreon wants to be family friendly, and allowing the selling of porn
on Patreon ruins that image?

Seems like a business opportunity for another website to take that niche, a
"Porntreon" if you will.

~~~
timthelion
Aren't NSFW filters good enough for family friendliness in America?

There are, of course, things which are not suitable for children, frightening
things, disturbing things, content related to immoral behavior.

But if you ask an American, the destruction of life is far more suitable for
children than it's creation. Patreon has no qualms hosting videos fantasizing
mass murder and death [1] even when those videos are obviously aimed at
children [2]. Is this really family friendliness or merely some strange flaw
in our psychology without moral or philosophic basis?

[1] [https://www.patreon.com/posts/dreadnought-
epic-13951713](https://www.patreon.com/posts/dreadnought-epic-13951713) [2]
[https://www.patreon.com/posts/103684](https://www.patreon.com/posts/103684)

~~~
vacri
Yeah, patreon should shut [1] down, because otherwise kids might incorporate
the lessons learned and just engage in space battles with their spaceships all
willy-nilly.

------
cisanti
Such a weird wording, it feels like blackmailing the company to get what you
want, otherwise you're a racist or bigot.

I can see it working but the letter left a very bad taste in my mouth and also
repeats the stereotype that the people they list are only into sex, porn.

------
featherverse
Patreon probably uses a credit card processor that prohibits selling
pornography, as many of them do.

If you're an original content creator you should not be using Patreon as your
sole source of income. Patreon is a good way to get attention for your brand,
but your primary goal as a creator of goods for sale should always be to
funnel your fans to your own website where you control all sales and you don't
have to give a portion of each sale to someone else.

~~~
timthelion
How would you funnel your fans to your own website if the credit card
processors won't let YOU sell porn?

~~~
featherverse
Just put a link to your website in your profile. Or in the emails you send out
to your patrons periodically.

~~~
timthelion
You didn't understand my point. Having a website isn't enough to sell porn if
the credit card companies won't let you charge money for it.

~~~
featherverse
There are processors who don't care, obviously, since all porn websites accept
credit card payments. As a business owner you can do the research to figure
out which ones to use.

all I'm saying is patreon is a waste of money, and should only be used to
expand visibility and reach.

------
_Codemonkeyism
If you're living in a free country, say "Fuck" on TV.

~~~
DanBC
I don't understand your point. Fuck is said very often on UK tv.

~~~
pjc50
.. after 9pm.

British TV censorship used to be much weirder:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988%E2%80%9394_British_broadcasting_voice_restrictions)

~~~
DanBC
the watershed is a guideline, and you can hear fuck before 9pm.

the watershed doesn't apply to radio, and you can hear fuck any time of day on
bbc radio 4, although they do try to limit it to times children won't be
listening.

