#fuck patreon

[doodlemancy]

Hey, so, Patreon is lying to you about Apple forcing their hand.

Patreon is getting rid of 1st-of-the-month/per-creation billing, claiming a new decision by Apple has forced their hand. This will hurt a lot of creatives, and their excuse is bullshit. Allow me to explain.

In 2018, Patreon tried to impose a new ill-considered fee structure on everyone that would have cost creators a lot of smaller pledges. They ended up apologizing for this profusely; they have now deleted this apology from their website and unfortunately I was unable to find it on the Internet Archive. This was shameful, but to their credit they backed off quickly when things got ugly.

Back in 2021, Patreon discussed plans to force all creators into a rolling bill structure and get rid of first-of-the-month/pay-up-front billing. The community once again very decisively shouted them down, and they had to walk it back again. This whole fiasco damaged the already shaky trust between Patreon creators and staff.

This week, Patreon announced that, along with extra fees, Apple's policies were supposedly forcing them to move everyone over to the rolling fee structure that they first tried to get us to agree to in 2021. Patreon will tell you they are not happy about this. As a person who spent a long time watching Patreon make terrible decisions, I can tell you-- they are probably very happy about this, because it's exactly the smokescreen they needed to do what they've been trying to do for years, which is pull ALL Patreon creators away from 1st-of-the-month and per-creation billing.

The spin in the news I've seen so far is "Apple bullies Patreon, boo hoo hoo poor Patreon". This is very obviously not what's happening. Mind you: Apple does suck, and they are doing something bad here. Fuck apple. But Patreon and Apple are BOTH the asshole in this situation; Everyone Sucks Here. Patreon has options: they can make the iOS app a reader app and do billing through the browser to avoid the restrictions and the extra fees (Netflix and Amazon, notably, both do this), or they can allow creators to opt-out of iOS billing if they want to use billing models that don't work with it.

It seems most likely to me that the Apple situation is a real fire that Patreon has chosen to use as a convenient smokescreen to do what they've been wanting to do since at least 2021, and maybe since 2018.

What do we do?:

They have a feedback form specifically about this.

They also have a creator discord.

And they have lots of social media pages where they probably really, really hope that this doesn't blow up again, because they never learn. The incidents I've described here aren't the only two other times Patreon has pissed off their creators. They know if they don't contain the noise it'll be harder to get away with it, so make some noise. They've done a lot of work to spin this cleverly so you'll have sympathy for them and they won't get the kind of backlash they know they deserve.

Please don't misuse these links and make threats or spam or something. All you have to do is give well-reasoned feedback. Patreon hates feedback. Make sure they get a nice heaping helping of their least favorite vegetable.

[paddedlittleparadise]

Bye, Patreon

Hi folks! Just to let you know, Patreon finally got around to axing my page today – exactly as they have done with so many other kink creators. Needless to say, the excuses they have given make little sense. That's merely par for the course, though, and I don't really expect anything better from such a fucked-up company.

Obviously, it sucks. But fortunately, since last year I've been publishing simultaneously over on Ream!

If you were still a patron of mine over on Patreon, first of all – I'm sorry. I wish I could do something to fix it, but at this point all I can ask is that you migrate over to Ream. It's got a pretty dang nice interface, and the membership is exactly the same price. Better yet, the fees will be going to support a company that, unlike Patreon, doesn't blatantly discriminate against our community.

Cheers – and here's to a better life without Patreon!

-PLP

[nycbabyjoey]

The Alien Zoo (Patreon Preview)

NSFW 18+ Only

Contains ABDL Content

"I know it's a lot to take in, commander, but we'll have to explain later," Greta informed. "The first tour group of the day is coming in and you need to have your diaper changed."

Greta had really undercut Ellen's internal monologue about being a strong leader with that comment about diaper changes. But, Ellen looked down to confirm that Greta was horribly, regrettably corrected. Her diaper began to swell and turn a dark shade of yellow as Ellen realized she had let her bladder go amongst all the surprises. So much for leading her crew through the mission, Ellen cried internally. Were they going to follow her as she waddled in her soaked diaper.

Ellen tried not to watch as Great untaped her wet diaper and slid it out from under her, leaving her naked on the floor. Unfortunately, while trying to look away, she was forced to look up at the aliens through the glass. Some took pictures, some pointed, and others made comments in a gibberish language of clicks and beeps that were assumedly about her strange, foreign anatomy. Ellen wiped tears away again as she watched one of the aliens walk up with a microphone and speak into it. The gibberish played through speakers in the room, which was followed by an English translation.

"Folks, you are very lucky to see the very first diaper change of our new residents here in the human exhibit," the alien guide exclaimed. "From our research, these baby humans are approximately thirty Earth years old, or seven years old here on <untranslatable>. I'm sure you're asking yourself, isn't that a long time for a species to remain infants? And, it is! Much longer than any other alien species we've discovered. But, it's clear by their long term use of diapers, that humans don't potty train until forty to forty-five Earth years - almost half of their lifespans!"

Ellen's head began to spin again, each word spoken over the speaker echoing inside her head like a curse. It was their space diapers! It had these aliens convinced that they were babies who weren't even toilet trained, which Ellen had just confirmed by weeing herself in fear. They were stuck in some kind of alien enclosure where they'd be treated like babies as an audience of gawking aliens watched enraptured as they filled their diapers!

The train's still rolling over on Patreon! We won't stop the party until they kick us out! Please consider supporting me over there to read the rest of this story, but also support all ABDL writers and artists especially those affected by Patreon's fucking stupid changes!

[feralroyal]

(crosspost from cohost)

so, a week after patreon abruptly permabanned hundreds of fetish accounts (with no warning & despite not violating patreon's tos) i'm now seeing a prominent 18+ artist getting his patreon frozen with no explanation at all as to what triggered it, or directive as to what he can do to recover his primary source of income. (link to tweet)

when the alarms started ringing on patreon's crackdown against fetish art, this is the slippery slope we were warning you about. dovegraveyard's work is not particularly niche in terms of content - he does primarily m/m pornography, rendered in watercolor. it is nothing more 'extreme' than you might find in any off-the-rack adult magazine. the fetishists and sex workers were, as they always are, the canaries in the coal mine, and in absence of patreon providing any real explanation as to why they have spontaneously frozen this account i seriously believe the noose is about to tighten further on all adult content, not just the kink.

not trying to be an alarmist or a doomer, but if you have a patreon you should be setting up some type of mailing list to keep in contact with your supporters, today. if your account ends up being targeted, it will be magnitudes harder to reorganize on a new platform without some way to inform subscribers what happened and where they can find you.

finally, if you are so inclined, i highly recommend pledging to dove as he attempts to rebuild on subscribestar. his art seriously kicks ass and he is just the latest in a long string of artists i deeply care about who have been casualties of patreon's dogshit staff shooting itself in the foot to please payment processors.

[cococowboah]

Patreon removed a story of mine as a character in it suffered from SA instigated by her father.

Now, Patreon can do whatever it wants, that's their platform. But they specifically asked me to remove that part of the story if I wanted it to stay up.

I'm pissed, not because "oh no, I can't make money on it," no. Nobody was reading SPURRED, it wasn't an active project, and I'm not currently making money on ANY of my projects anyway. I don't care about that.

What I'm pissed about is how this might affect my future works if I ever do begin making a living from my work through Patreon. I'm not going to just change my characters stories because they deal with uncomfortable topics like SA. I'm an SA survivor, I write characters who are SA survivors. I'm not going to censor myself or my projects because a corporation says I need to if I want to benefit from their platform.

So, I don't really know what to do now. Pieces of Him is also going to deal with SA. I can't even consider putting it on Patreon now knowing I'm going to get a notice that I need to change pivotal moments of a character's backstory for the sake of a corporation wanting to maintain a squeaky clean image.

And before anyone asks, no, the story did not explicitly detail the SA itself. Insinuation was as far as I went. I wanted the reader to feel uncomfortable without feeling offended. I wanted the reader to feel uncomfortable because it's an uncomfortable fucking topic and it shouldn't be skirted around. If someone didn't like it they didn't need to read it.

I'm so sick of how censored the internet is getting. It's NOT for the sake of protecting SA survivors who may be triggered by certain details of a story. This is about making the internet nice and clean and proper for advertisers and investors. It's not about you. It's not about me. It's about money and it always will be.

If it were about protecting survivors, then they would acknowledge that engaging with media that explicitly deals with those subjects and characters overcoming the trauma surrounding SA can be cathartic for survivors if they choose to do so.

Again if you are uncomfortable with something then do. not. read. it. There is a detailed warning at the beginning of the story. It is the responsibility of the reader to gauge what they're okay with and not okay with. Not mine.

I just wanna take a moment to thank platforms like AO3, our literal final bastion for freedom of speech and creativity. SPURRED isn't a fan project so it doesn't really belong on AO3 but I'm thankful that we have one place on the internet where I know my work is never going to be removed or requested to be changed for any reason whatsoever. It's the one place where I can write without the anxiety of a corporate overlord looking over my shoulder and saying "Nope! Don't like this! Change it!"

Rant over, to sum it up, fuck censorship and, does anyone know of any good Patreon alternatives? I definitely can't use them for future projects knowing what I know now. It's only a matter of time before a guidelines update gets Pieces of Him axed for "Promoting Homosexuality and Infidelity" as well as Paul's past as an SA survivor.

[fierceferrets]

Hey Ferret Fam! If you were not aware; we are staunchly anti-AI art. AI art is theft, and while it could be something useful and fun, as it stands right now there is no moral way to utilize AI art.

By letting "AI artists" on Patreon we are validating art theft and impersonation as a source of income. With Patreon deciding to play around with how they can utilize/profit from AI art, we have found that Ko-Fi actually prohibits it and anything from their site being used to train it!

So, if possible, we'd love if everyone could move their subscriptions there. As it is, we post more updates to discord instead of there anyway, so nothing would change.

For now, will be closing all tiers so we can no longer receive new patreons, and most likely beginning to delete posts. Don't worry, all content can be found on discord and with the new website, we'll also be creating a subscriber email list for those who do not wish to be on discord - and in the future, a subscriber portal on our website. edit: actually even better we'll pay for ko-fi gold so we can post there.

Thank you again for all of your love and support. As I have my last 2 finals tomorrow and wednesday, you will be seeing content from us again real soon.

https://ko-fi.com/fierceferrets/

[brighan]

❗️ If you're an iOS user and you're joining any Patreon page starting November 2024 (OR IF YOU'RE CHANGING YOUR PLEDGE!), please DO NOT do it through the app. Use a browser instead.

Android app is safe. We don't see ANY of this 30%. It goes straight to Apple's wallet or it's charged from us!!

You can still use the iOS app safely, however, to avoid this fee you have to use something else when signing up!

[triangulor]

Hbomberguy, approximately every 16 months:

[deadhawke]

There is. Truly nothing funnier on this planet. Than listening to Aabria and Erika describe omegaverse to Brennan and Lou. I have not cry laughed this hard in years.

[beverage2000]

[valtsv]

the silt verses listening experience

[doodlemancy]

hey, i’m just wondering will this affect patrons who don’t use the ios app?? and what precisely does “rolling fee” mean. i’m just not entirely certain about what the consequences of patreon doing this might be :/

"rolling" in this case means that you get charged monthly every 30 days on the day of the month that you signed up (ex. you signed up on the 15th, you get charged on the 15th the next month) whereas with the 1st-of-the-month billing means no matter what day of the month you sign up, you would always get charged on the first day of the month after the first charge (ex. you signed up on the 15th, you get billed that day, the next month you get billed on the 1st).

and yes, these changes will affect basically everyone in some way eventually, since Patreon is changing the way their entire operation works. this also means that patrons will no longer be billed a single time per month, but instead get a separate charge for every patreon they subscribe to, which for some people is annoying, harder to budget/plan for, or might lead to extra bank fees or something for a lot of small transactions. i've already seen people start to complain about this more recently as Patreon's been pushing more creators toward a rolling bill schedule.

i recommend checking the notes/comments on my original post, you can see some more discussion about how exactly this will affect people and make it more difficult for creators to manage their patreons. in short, changing the billing schedule and getting rid of per-creation billing affects reward fulfillment for a lot of creators, and will likely push a lot of people to just have to give up on patreon. :(

[datcravat]

She's the best of the best oF THE BEST LOVE YOU KARLACH

[arawsuu]

Save me Astarion..

Astarion save me.,.,

Astarion...

[oooocleo]

another headshot batch! ill do more when im back from MCM 🫡

patreon

[havockingboo]

December 11th everyone!!