
Patreon Is Suspending Adult Content Creators Because of Its Payment Partners - cribbles
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbqwwj/patreon-suspension-of-adult-content-creators
======
themagician
This problem has existed forever. As long as I can remember. The main company
that seems to be able to process credit cards for porn is CCBill. They seem to
have no real competition other than small fringe services. As soon as those
services get big enough it raises flags and they get shut down. How and why
CCBill are able to do it while others aren’t I don’t know.

You can sell snake oil on Shopify all day long but sell a JPG with that shows
female nipples and it raises flags.

Does anyone know WHY this actually is? I know it’s related to Title 18,
Section 2257 somehow, but I don’t understand exactly how, nor why CCBill seems
to operate without issue. Can somone with inside knowledge explain?

Porn has come such a long way in the last 10 years. Maybe I’m just more
progressive than I realize, but I see stuff like X-Art as actual art and I
wish there was something like iTunes for porn.

If someone can explain to be what the legal roadblock is for porn billing and
how one might be able to get around it, I’d be the first investor and founder.
Seriously. There is so much great pornography out there now I feel like you
could actually change the way people think about it and maybe even clean up
the industry. It doesn’t have to be a dirty thing you bury under 10 cryptic
folders.

~~~
stickfigure
I was the CTO of kink.com in the mid-2000s.

My biggest challenge of that time was reliable billing. That said, it wasn't
quite as bad as you make it out to be. When you have a long history of low
chargebacks you can make some deals, and even then there were a few options.
We always had a few processors integrated at any one time because 1) any
processor could pull the plug on us with minimal notice and 2) these
organizations tended to be technologically inept and their platforms were not
reliable.

Some payments we processed through our own merchant account. We tried to get
more merchant accounts and were unsuccessful. It's difficult because (IIRC)
banks only allow a certain percentage of their total volume to be "high risk"
and porn is in that bucket no matter how low your chargeback rate is and how
long you've been established. It's something you could probably arbitrage
profitably if you were a bank, but by the time you get to be a big enough bank
you are bound into the stodgy culture of banking ("ewww porn").

That ship has sailed however; there's not much money in porn anymore. The tube
sites have _killed_ the content business; this is a shrinking industry. I
agree, the content is better than it ever has been before, and you can get it
free... uploaded to tube sites by the very producers themselves, hoping to get
exposure.

~~~
cantrevealname
> _The tube sites have killed the content business; this is a shrinking
> industry. I agree, the content is better than it ever has been before._

Then why is so much porn still being made if there's so little money in it
today?

~~~
rutierut
There is actually a really interesting story behind this that was once on HN,
I unfortunately can't find it anymore but it has something to do with the
following process:

1\. New content creator enters market. 2\. Content gets uploaded to tube sites
constantly, take-downs are intentionally slow and ineffective to make this
process as tiresome and inefficient as possible. 3\. New creator is eventually
forced to upload the content themselves in order to generate leads and collect
some revenue although this is very little. 4\. This revenue is not and was
never planned to be enough for the creator, two options: A. Quality of content
and models is reduced in order to reduce costs and remain profitable. B. This
does not happen, studio struggles to stay afloat and is forced to sell, it
gets acquired by guess who... the parent company of the tube site.

I probably got some things wrong so feel free to correct me!

~~~
iamben
Jon Ronson's "The Butterfly Effect" covers this quite well. It's free on
iTunes and quite an entertaining listen.

[http://www.jonronson.com/butterfly.html](http://www.jonronson.com/butterfly.html)

------
eurg
This kind of outcry happens again and again, but nothing ever happens, because
it's a niche problem.

Some time ago it was fetlife: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/payment-
processors-are...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/payment-processors-
are-still-policing-your-sex-life)

And maybe of interest: When the EU brought out GDPR, so many people complained
about the injustice of one group of governments bringing their laws to the
world. For the rest of the world, this is nothing new: The dominance of the US
finance sector means that any US law is automatically international law. Visa
follows US laws, nobody can exist without taking Visa payments, so everybody
follows Visa rules, which means you follow US rules.

In the end, what is allowed is the intersection of behavior that's not
penalized in any state of the world.

~~~
tedunangst
And yet I'm constantly told that European banks make it trivial to transfer
money without middlemen like visa. So why not just submit payment that way?

~~~
oldcynic
They do. If I have someone's bank details I can transfer for free, instantly.
(OK it sometimes takes a few minutes at weekends). There's two issues with
_ever_ using that for online payment:

1\. There is no mechanism to obtain a refund for a mistake - eg I mistype the
account number, someone else gets the money. Banks won't reverse but ask the
payee to refund. If they still exist and are willing to cooperate. This is the
route used for many, many scams like Microsoft calling because they noticed a
fault with your Windows.

2\. There is no protection under the Consumer Credit Act to obtain refund in
the event the company goes bust or the product is defective and they won't
refund. Credit cards have to provide that.

I use it with friends in preference to any other method, especially Paypal
though.

~~~
Certhas
With SofortBanking and similar services it is becoming more common to use this
to pay online. It eliminates much of the issues you mention.

~~~
Kliment
Sofort are problematic because they a) access your account via credentials
that it's against bank ToS to share and b) they scrape and store (and likely
sell) transaction data unrelated to the current transaction because they have
access to your account.

------
0x00000000
I'll be 'that guy'. This is the number one use case for a cryptocurrency in my
opinion - a decentralized microtransaction system.

This isn't the first time Patreon has faced these issues and services like
PayPal are notorious for closing your account then giving you the finger.

I don't want to give my credit card info to 30 different sites or services or
creators I want to support. I don't want a bunch of small recurring charges
from different places on my credit card. And most of all, I don't want a
service to arbitrarily be able to decide (or have others force their hand as
in this case) what I am and am not allowed to support.

I don't think the technology or people are remotely near ready for mainstream
adoption yet but it is still the most compelling use case I've seen.

~~~
em3rgent0rdr
Unfortunately cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are a little ill-suited for
automatic recurring payments because one of crypto's big selling points is
that the crypto is stored on your computer, not in some bank or other
computer, so it can't be easily automatically be taken from you. Of course
maybe someone could develop a special type of crypto-currency or wallet system
which allows for coin to be stored privately while also able to specify
automatic transfers without any action by the user (nor the requirement to
keep your computer online).

~~~
vertex-four
This sort of thing is, actually, a reasonable use case for things like
Ethereum's smart contracts. If there were a standard interface by which
revocable "direct debits" could be created against users' wallets, this would
be solved.

Except that it needs more thinking about than that, because of questions like
"what data source does everything use to agree that 1 month has passed since
the last transaction", or "can I revoke a direct debit within a certain time
period after the money's left my wallet" combined with "how do I get notified
when money leaves my wallet".

There's also the question of whether the ability to just register a monthly
standing order with various common clients would be good enough, rather than
needing to pull money.

A lot of this is a UX exercise rather than a technical one, to be honest.

~~~
heptathorp
Every Ethereum block contains a timestamp which smart contracts can read, so
it's trivial to write code that only allows withdrawals in 1 month intervals.

There's no way to revoke a transaction but you could implement a hold so ETH
could only be withdrawn from the contract x days after the charge is incurred,
within such time the owner could cancel the withdrawal.

As far as notifications are concerned, there are events in Ethereum that you
can subscribe to. So for example you could subscribe to a charge event, and go
in and dispute it.

~~~
Drdrdrq
> Every Ethereum block contains a timestamp which smart contracts can read, so
> it's trivial to write code that only allows withdrawals in 1 month intervals

Not disagreeing, just wanted to point out that one needs to be careful with
timestamps in Ethereum, as the source of truth is miner. Using timestamps
could result in security vulnerabilities.

~~~
DennisP
True if you're being really fine-grained about it, like using the timestamp as
the seed of a random number generator.

However, on the scale of a month, the miners aren't going to be able to mess
with you. A block stamped with a significantly incorrect timestamp won't be
accepted by other miners.

~~~
Drdrdrq
Are you sure about that? I was under the impression that there were no checks
whatsoever and it's only a goodwill of miners (and lack of incentive to do
otherwise) that provides somewhat accurate time.

On the flip side, I'm sure there are/will be oracles for approx. block time,
so this is still a solveable issue.

~~~
DennisP
Here's a spec from 2015:

[https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/blob/c02254611f218f43cbb075...](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/blob/c02254611f218f43cbb07517ca8e5d00fd6d6d75/Block-
Protocol-2.0.md)

From the block validation section: "Is block.timestamp <= now + 900 and is
block.timestamp >= parent.timestamp?"

(In Solidity, block.timestamp is in seconds, and I think that's a direct
translation from the underlying opcode, so I assume it's 900 seconds here.)

~~~
Drdrdrq
I stand corrected - it seems blocks' time must be increasing and must not be
more than 15 minutes in the future, according to clocks of validating miners.
Thanks, didn't know that!

------
azernik
TechCrunch did an interesting piece on this:
[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/)

The short version: PayPal blames the credit card companies, the credit card
companies have nothing to do with it, and looking at court cases seems to
indicate that regulations once required financial institutions to consider
"reputational risk" but those were ruled unconstitutional a few years ago.

It seems like everyone is sleepwalking into censorship based on entrenched
business practices rather than actually making reasoned decisions.

------
claudiawerner
I find this worrying, and for the usual reasons. People would often want to
make a living by making money from their craft, but it turns out it's not so
simple as finding "the market", one needs a whole load of boilerplate for it
too. One such piece of boilerplate is Patreon, and Patreon's boilerplate is
payment processors. So it's strange that whenever this topic comes up, people
speak of it as if it's just a little issue, when it's not.

Often this idea that "it's their business, so it's their rules" is trotted
out, which while of course being technically correct works to shut down any
kind of critique of the state of affairs. People rightly or wrongly, depend on
such platforms for their livelihood, and it's a shame that, as eurg wrote,
nothing happens because it's a niche problem. It doesn't affect the "good
guys", because we value their craft more than other crafts.

But it comes down to this - I realise that if I ever wanted to monetise my own
artistry, I'd have to use Patreon, and the limitation of what I can post (be
that adult content, even the more "disgusting" kinds involving incest or
bestiality as they mention) means that my creative output is limited. As such,
what I can spend my time on is not only restricted by "the market", but also
by Patreon, also by Visa, also by PayPal, also by Mastercard etc. I become
self-censored, chilling effects.

~~~
adultcontent
I can assure you with full confidence that there's practically no limitation
on "disgusting material" that you can sell online, as long as it's legal
(which bestiality isn't).

In fact, the farther you push the boundaries, the better chance you will have
at making money, assuming there still is an audience for it. There's a
platform for almost anything.

Patreon just isn't the place for it and it never was. Patreon isn't even on
the radar.

That's not to say you will never run into issues with payment, but your
ultimate problem isn't going to be the platforms, it's finding customers.

~~~
icebraining
According to Wikipedia, sale and distribution of zoophilic pornography is
legal in a few states, including CA.

------
gruez
I know what everybody's thinking: visa/mastercard is playing world morality
police. But most of the major payment processors have banned certain types of
products from being used on their platform[1], some of which obstinately lacks
a "moral" reasoning (see: virtual game currency). My guess is that _those_
types of businesses attract a high fraud/chargeback rate, which makes them
more expensive to process. It's a risk/benefit trade off, nothing more.

[1] [https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited-
businesses](https://stripe.com/gb/prohibited-businesses)

[https://www.paypal.com/gb/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-
full](https://www.paypal.com/gb/webapps/mpp/ua/acceptableuse-full)

[https://docs.adyen.com/legal/adyen-restricted-prohibited-
lis...](https://docs.adyen.com/legal/adyen-restricted-prohibited-list)

~~~
jacquesm
Gambling is super high risk compared to porn.

In fact, high risk is just another way in which VISA and MC will squeeze
merchants, it doesn't matter to VISA because they pass all of the risk to the
merchant anyway.

------
Isinlor
Can someone explain to me why people and companies even use credit cards? Why
not bank transfers? Why credit cards are often in exclusions to other payment
methods?

I wanted to support 3blue1brown on Patreon and I can't because I need to have
a credit card. Even PayPal requires a credit card.

If I want to have a server on AWS or Google Cloud I need to have a credit
card.

Why not prepay trough bank transfer? It's some American thing that is just
imposed on Europeans because why not or there are some valid reasons why
companies try to force credit cards on me?

As I see it, if I send someone money it's up to me and that person, eventually
to a court, to resolve any issues. Why bank can't be a neutral third-party?

To me it seems like a beneficial deal to companies. If they got the money then
it's up to them to return them or not, so they are in beneficial, safe
position.

Currently I try to somehow go around need for credit cards with virtual credit
cards that are prepaid, but it seems like they are banned quite often... E.g.
I haven't found a way to do prepaid for Google Cloud, so I can't use it.

~~~
chrischen
Credit cards offer a lot of benefits and cash back (essentially a
discount).for bank transfer to compete they’d need to offer the consumer
similar fiscounts in lieu of the benefits and cashback.

Some cards can offer 3-5% of the transaction back, on top of a slew of
benefits including extended warranty, 90 day accidental damage or theft
reimbursement, price protection (a refund if the price changes), return
protection (a refund if the store doesn’t accept a return).

~~~
Isinlor
Yes, that would explain why customers may want to use, so companies may offer
them as an option, but why companies don't offer bank transfers? In Europe we
do most of the day to day payments with bank transfers and companies seems to
be OK with that.

~~~
chrischen
I offered bank transfers on Instapainting.com but nobody used it. It required
logging in with your bank credentials. Other times I’ve seen it you would have
to enter your routing and account number, and then wait several business days
to verify the transaction from two deposits before they could debit your
account.

The user experience is simply not in place by the incjmbent players.

It’s like the adoption of QR codes in China vs US, apple, facebook never baked
in native qr code support like they did in WeChat in China. So in China it
took off like crazy, but in the US no one used them because no one could
(you’d have to find and download a special app).

Apple did this because they were banking on bluetooth beacons instead, but
that never took hold either.

Corporate strategy and policies thus are largely to blame for this, and
unfortunately it can boil down to a single decision from a C-level that
doesn’t know better.

~~~
Isinlor
Your company is located in USA and I guess you cater mostly to USA based
customers.

I start to suspect that this is partially a cultural thing.

In Poland, my home country, we pay mostly with PayU and DotPay, or direct bank
transfer. Many companies even offer templates that one can print and use to
pay from a post office :). I have been even using it from time to time as a
kid before I had my own bank account. In Belgium almost all payments can be
done with Bankcontact. I think some people even consider card payments one
with Bankcontact, because I quite often would be asked if I want to pay "with
Bankcontact" instead of "with a card". In Netherlands most payments go trough
iDeal. Sometimes I also see Sofort, PayPal or PaySafe. PaySafe is a prepaid
code for X money that you can buy in a shop :) .

[https://www.payu.pl/en](https://www.payu.pl/en)
[http://www.dotpay.pl/](http://www.dotpay.pl/)
[https://www.bancontact.com/en/what-does-bancontact-stand-
for](https://www.bancontact.com/en/what-does-bancontact-stand-for)
[https://www.ideal.nl/en/](https://www.ideal.nl/en/)

All of them are some kind of third-party that seems to allow companies to
verify immediately that a payment has been done.

In case of Patreon there seems to be a demand for non credit card payments and
they even acknowledge that. So, it indeed may boil down to some decision to
not invest in that :/ .

[https://www.google.com/search?q=patreon+without+credit+card](https://www.google.com/search?q=patreon+without+credit+card)
[https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115001917686-W...](https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-
us/articles/115001917686-Why-do-I-need-to-add-a-credit-card-for-PayPal-)

------
drngdds
This seems like a great use for cryptocurrency. (Not some weird complicated
ICO-backed scheme, just regular payment.)

------
lovelearning
Whatever the reasoning behind these suspensions, I think it's very rude and
unprofessional to simply suspend accounts without giving some warnings and
some time for a user to comply. Most of these popular online services,
including the tech giants, seem to prefer this rude approach. Not having any
reliable human support makes the problem worse. Since you can't provide human
support, just give some days to comply and then suspend.

~~~
Nasrudith
Professionalism would require it to be an actual planned approach and not
simply 'hair on fire' behavior in response to the knee-jerk reactions of
others.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
Until I saw the stock image I was so confused. Adult content creators seems
like almost everyone. It's outdated seeming to say it this way. Sexual content
creators seems a better option.

~~~
azernik
"Adult content" or "adult entertainment" is, in US English, exclusively used
as a euphemism for pornography.

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
I recall but I’ve been living in Europe for 6 years and it seems odd now
especially when phrased as ‘adult content creators’

~~~
azernik
Assuming it's in the UK, remember the saying: two countries, divided by a
common language :-D

~~~
ajeet_dhaliwal
You’re right, it’s the UK.

------
hellbanTHIS
Somebody a little while ago figured out the most popular Patreon pages, wish I
could find it, but I remember there was SO much porn. Not regular porn either
but weird japanamation porn, furry porn, you name it. And that‘s probably why
Patreon doesn’t have a functional “discovery” feature.

Like I have a songwriting web app almost ready that I think might do well
there but without a way for people to discover it through the community what’s
the point of using Patreon and not a traditional subscription model? The porn
has to go so they can have a “you might also like” column that isn’t filled
with hentai barf porn or whatever.

~~~
ink_13
You can see the top Patreon creators on Graphtreon:
[https://graphtreon.com/top-patreon-creators](https://graphtreon.com/top-
patreon-creators)

Even going back in time (Graphtreon keeps historical data), there's less porn
there than you suggest.

~~~
hellbanTHIS
I think that’s it but it didn’t have the categories when I saw it, so every
other one was adult animation, etc.

------
LyndsySimon
The same problem exists for firearms and related products. There are only a
couple of (expensive) processors out there.

------
Havoc
Seems unfortunate. These are what I'd imagine to be near private transactions
between consenting adults.

Where's the harm in that?

------
throwaway98798
It's easy the see the financial institutions as the bad guys or the users as
the idiots. But really, after having used a few of those sites for adult, I
feel safe saying that most of them had/have it coming.

Personal experience only a few weeks old, with a medium sized porn site:

* During the subscription, you get another service -costing extra of course- proposed. The checkbox for it is checked by default, in small font, on the side of the screen.

* The subscription; it renews every month by default. You better read carefully before you enter you payment data.

* You want to cancel? No way to do it from your account settings. You try the web site of the processor; nothing. Well, actually, maybe there is, but the only way to log in is by using you card credit number. No thanks. You finally find a link (deep in the FAQ of the first web site) that will brings you to a page on the processor's web site.

* Finally, you seem to be able to cancel; the page shows a "Membership cancellation" title, a pile of text, and a "I confirm" button. Well you better read the pile of text, because the "I confirm" button of the "Cancellation" page does not cancel your account.

And that's only for one site.

Beside that, there is also a whole bunch of stuff that would make any IT
professional cringe really hard.

It's kinda hard to believe that all of this is perfectly legal, specially
given that they operate internationally. No surprise that their payment
partners get reluctant to work with them.

PS: not speaking about Patreon, never used that site.

------
_trampeltier
Paypal, Patreon, Visa, whatever. They do all the same.

Remember Fetlife?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13483998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13483998)

And there are 1000 other examples too.

------
newtron54
I feel like this constantly happens. I'm not a fan of people getting shut down
if they are creating something legal and it has an audience.

------
scarface74
I had a friend who was in promotions. She promoted parties mostly for gay
women. Nothing sexual or explicit. She found it hard to get payment processors
- this was around 2011....

I thought this was ridiculous.

------
FooBadDev
So consensus largely is - probability of fraud is higher in adult
entertainment business, downstream processors either charge exorbitant fees or
altogether refuse to accept such payments, to mitigate having to deal with
chargebacks.

My question is, Why is chargebacks still a thing ? Why hasn't the US adopted
2F Auth for payments ?

With advent of smart phones we can have reliable identification based on two
factor authentication, by sending a text message to mobile number registered
with the bank, or even go further with text + fingerprint / text + password.
The odds of fraud with such system would be minuscule.

Is there any reason apart from banks being greedy and the government being
hand in glove with them ?

~~~
perrin68
Chargebacks protect buyers from dishonest sellers?

~~~
FooBadDev
Shouldn't that be job of a consumer protection body ? Banks should not be in
operating in law enforcement domain / be deciding what's right or wrong.

My understanding is most chargebacks are for fraudulent transactions, which
were not authorized by the card owner.

------
Beltiras
Looks like an opportunity for an adult version of Patreon.

~~~
dawhizkid
They already exist

~~~
astrodust
Imagine Patreon but even more dysfunctional and unreliable.

------
8bitsrule
I recall a magazine that bought and published articles that were certain not
to offend anyone. It was called Reader's Digest. Haven't seen a copy in
decades, yet it persists to this day.

There is a crowd that will pay to have what it's exposed to restricted. I
guess they would not want Patreon to create a separate, less-restricted
service. (The name 'Patreon' itself seemed carefully chosen.)

------
astrodust
Credit card company or morality enforcer?

~~~
eurg
Credit card companies don't really care either way, but heavily regulated
industries tend to prefer being on the regulator's good side, and the
regulator is ultimately the political institutions.

The mirror version of "distributed costs and concentrated benefits" is working
against what progressively minded people would think of as simple personal
freedoms: Most progressives are not avid consumers of adult services, so they
won't throw their full political weight against such actions. But those who
are against adult services _will_.

I hope that voting and patience in explaining to political outgroups does
help, but I admit it's more hope than anything else, strangely. This should be
a bipartisan priority, but either party thinks they can "win" the though-
police race.

~~~
astrodust
I was half joking. This often tends to be a problem of the customers more than
the credit card companies.

Adult content and gambling face charge-backs at a far, far higher rate than
for other things. I'm sure cryptocurrency is now in this basket as well, as
anything people have "regrets" about tend to get charged back way more than
others.

If credit cards were more secure, if you couldn't just claim "Wasn't me, gimme
my money back" on just about anything, this would be far less of a problem.

Credit cards should, at the absolute least, have embedded one-time password
generators as a necessary component for online purchases.

The American financial system is so ridiculously baroque, though, that I bet
this will happen forty years from now when the chip+PIN phase in is finally
complete.

------
dolguldur
Meanwhile the multitudes reiterate the “crypto is dead” mantra until next
year.

------
asasidh
bitcoin and clones - here is yet another niche opportunity.

------
joshfraser
This is why we need cryptocurrency.

------
adultcontent
This idea that the livelihoods of adult performers are at stake is nonsense.

Almost nobody in the industry relies on Patreon for their income, not in the
least because people don't go to Patreon for adult content. Sure, some
performers do set up one for their fans to support them, but practically
nobody lives off of it.

Not to name any names, but there are dozens of popular sites where performers
can offer their content/services. They all take a relatively big cut (on the
order of 50%), but that's due to rampant fraud, chargebacks and because of
money laundering. If that service could be offered substantially cheaper, it
would. Case in point is that despite the issues, cryptocurrency isn't popular
at all.

