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⚠️Important Info: Patreon Livestream 12th December 2024 ⚠️
🕑 Added 2024-12-13 03:25:03 +0000 UTCA write-up of Patreon’s policy livestream of Thursday 12th December 2024.
Thank you for waiting on this write-up of Patreon’s policy livestream of Thursday 12th December 2024. You can watch an archived version of the livestream here: ► https://youtu.be/uhnaSaRCVOE ◄
This write-up will only focus on the policy part that affects all users of Patreon, so I'll just briefly drop this part here:
and move on. Due to the stream constantly jumping back-and-forth between tangentially-related subject matter, I’ll reorder things to be more concise and easily digestible. So any questions that were asked in the Question and Answer session at the tail end of the stream will be bought forward in relation to the itinerary presented.
As always, you can read these policy guidelines here: https://www.patreon.com/en-GB/policy
All images will be saved as attachments to download at their original size. A text-only file will also be available.
The stream went as such:
The hosts began with:
To quote the Marketplace and Payments Lead:
“A marketplace without buyers is just a place; a market place without a market is just a meeting.”
To that end of commerce and ‘bad actors exploiting the platform’:
Some attendees raised some valid points that were not addressed in the above, namely:
To aggregate the separate answers the hosts provided into one singular paragraph, Patreon is still in the process of internally developing stratagems to address these scenarios. In essence, most purchased digital products should be more or less immediately accessible to the paying customer, and it is down to the Content Creator’s discretion and relationship with said customer.
However, the Payments Team actively try to minimise any fraudulent activity (irrespectively of whether it is the Content Creator or the customer) in conjunction with Content Policy, so if Patreon are alerted to something, they are not acting out on fraudulent claims, like ‘chargeback scams’ for example. Any issues should be raised with the Support Team.
In relation to this, the following question was asked:
The indirect response to this was that Patreon’s ultimate goal was to have the platform house a more descriptive and customer-friendly experience. This would improve relations between content creators and fans as customers would be less likely to feel misled by services/products content creators provide, as the latter would have clearer guidelines to follow. As for specific strategies, the Patreon Creator Hub and the official Patreon Discord channel would be the best place to turn for advice on selling one’s self and their wares.
Cited was a Guidelines Policy Addendum produced in October (now under ‘Inauthentic Behaviours’). In response to this, an audience member raised an interesting point, namely:
For context, Metahuman is a tool used to develop realistic-looking but fictional human models and is a part of Unreal Engine, a 3D graphics game engine and development kit. The 5th iteration went public in 2022 and an entire television show animation was produced with it that aired in 2024. DAZ 3D is an older unrelated 3D software company that ostensibly provided 3D human models in the past. It still exists today.
One audience member disagreed with the proposal, stating:
Moving on from artificial intelligence…
Further expanded upon in the Guidelines.
A ton of support links were provided so I’ll just simply list them:
https://creatorhub.patreon.com/articles/7-practical-tips-for-navigating-and-avoiding-burnout
https://creatorhub.patreon.com/articles/coping-with-controversy
The following was also stated:
Now, to focus on what I zeroed in on when I received notice of the stream…
Nothing has been enacted as of yet, but certain get-around methods may no longer work; just something to bear in mind going forward.
Related to this was an announcement of a revamped Appeals process. This was mentioned as being in-development back in July’s livestream but has now been finalised as follows:
Naturally, all this generated a fair few questions but frustratingly, there wasn’t enough time for all queries to be addressed directly. Like for example:
The response was:
‘things are still currently in development, nothing has yet been finalised’.
And:
Given someone in the audience observed:
I suppose erring on the side of caution is Patreon’s remit, and one has to use the Appeals process to argue their case. As for what the hosts actually said, well, if your account is suspended, you can simply create a new one but you have to contact the Trust & Safety Team and outline what you intend to do, and provide evidence as such. It will then be down to the sole discretion of the human moderator to see if your appeal goes through.
The remaining hitherto unmentioned aspects of the stream I’ll briefly address now.
And some quick questions-and-answers:
Happily, this is something I personally noticed was rectified recently. But to echo what the hosts said, by default, any Patron who has previously pledged to a Content Creator who serves that particular audience now has the ability to search for other Content Creators of the same vein by default, on mobile (irrespective of whether it’s via the app or your browser of choice) and on desktop. Otherwise, you can toggle this on and off in your search settings.
To put it succinctly, it all depends on context: as long as it is clearly denoted to be affirmative and consensual, it is permitted. This also includes something akin to a medical setting, in which someone is aiding someone to eat if they are too frail to do it themselves.
For legal reasons, the hosts were not allowed to detail the processes. But Patreon is actively fighting and has blocked web-scrapers and programs used to train AI data-sets from using Patrons’ content posted on Patreon itself.
To echo what was said at the very end of the stream, you can reach out to Patreon's Policy Team directly via email at creatorpolicy@patreon.com.
For the next seven days until 19th December 2024, there will be a thread on this on Patreon’s official Discord here: https://discord.gg/patreon
The stream ended here.
Thank you for reading. My thoughts will follow in a seperate post.
Comments
Allan Meyer
Thank you for sharing what content creators have to contend with on the back end, which is typically barely visible to the end user.
