BazilRacoondog
patreon
A warning about recent Patreon TOS changes
🕑 Added 2024-04-06 11:32:26 +0000 UTCWanted to include it in a monthly summary post but thought some people might miss it that way while the info that important should not be missed.
Odd things happening to Patreon lately, quite concerning and alarming things. I first noticed it when I saw a popular furry artist Antidev making a post about his Patreon page being completely terminated for posting incest (both characters were adults from his words), not just temporarily banned but deleted forever. More than that, now he is allowed to make a new account only after 3 months of waiting. This was a serious stress call, although after some research I saw that Patreon creators are normally not banned that instantly, even those who made much worse things, like minors kind of stuff, got just a polite warning and asked to remove the content which violates the site's guidelines, I guess Patreon has that standard rule where they give a warning first, then a temporary ban and then a permanent ban. I can only assume that it's actually not the first time Antidev violated Patreon rules, I don't like to spread rumors but let's say I just know he has certain things to hide and it easily could be not his first violation.
Anyway, the thing I know for certain is that Antidev posting incest, even the most harmless one, could easily be a violation. Exploring this topic on Twitter I saw that many people got that warning for posting incest, although many were also posting it and advertising it on their Twitter like nothing happened without getting any warnings. Also, Twitter discussions of Patreon banning incest can be seen since the very 2019 while a real panic started only just recently.
How do I feel about it? Well, I'm obviously concerned and confused. Confused because I'm posting incest for a long time and didn't even know it's a violation. You know, Volk and Vityai whom I draw all the time are actually brothers and they're not the only such couple in my gallery. One patron of mine even unsubscribed from me long time ago and left an exit survey saying "I saw an incest art, didn't want to see it." or something like that. It was a commission art with Crash Bandicoot sucking commissioner's OC who is Crash's dad by his headcanon, both characters were obviously 18+ and consent. I was baffled by it and I'm still confused why incest is so taboo, considered unhealthy and equaled to rape, zoo and pedophilia and not only by corporations which always come up with some puritan shit but even simple people who follow me and don't mind my totally deprived shit like farts, scat, and filthmonster stuff, you know, but at the same time repulsed by just two adult men banging so much they unsubscribe forever. I mean, I UNDERSTAND the cases when it's really unhealthy. The sad truth is real life incest is much more often a really awful unhealthy thing rather than idealized horny fantasies of ours, it's not mutual, often about a parent or brother having an unhealthy interest for their son/daughter/brother/sister who is not over 18 and it deserves to be considered a rape and obviously illegal. But what about a situation where we have just two grown-up adult men who have a mutual interest in each other? It always felt as healthy for me, I mean what's the problem of it and what difference does it make if they're brothers or not? Nobody would tell the difference if the fact that these two characters are brothers or a father/son couple wasn't told. I can see why brother/sister incest is controversial, you know, it's a biological reason and this is why I don't support such relationship myself as well but c'mon, men can't get pregnant so it's not the brother x brother case.
In fact, I can see the source of all these "daddy issues" and the omnipresent love for daddies in a gay community. Father is an archetype of a man love, this is the first male person we see when we're born and this is the first man who gives us love and care in our life and for some people this is the only such man because, you know, many gays are lonely. Some people don't even have a dad and lacked fatherly love in their lives and they have the urge to compensate it. I had no father myself, no brothers, no male relatives at all and no male friends, I was mainly surrounded by females up to my teenage and girls are nice friends but not lovers for a gay guy, so I pretty much understand it and don't understand why such clear as day thing is considered wrong by many.
Another two problems with Patreon's policy which were brought up on Twitter recently are new TOS changes and rules against non-consent 18+ materials and "eating disorders". 
The first problem was discussed a lot on Twitter and made fun of because it sounds very odd like if the characters must provide their ID cards and say out loud that they're consent even if the characters are just fictional. I can see good intentions behind this rule to just fight a sexualization of rape which I obviously don't support but this concerned many users with how weirdly it's described. 
The rules about force feeding art being treated as an "eating disorder glorification" which is against Patreon policy also sounds alarming. However, despite how many artists who're also Patreon creators do weight gain and feederism art, for now there's no evidence of any of them getting a warning for violating this rule so far. The only thing which gives us hope are these lines below, you see, "works involving disordered eating, feederism and related topics that have a community support or are otherwise contextualized in a manner that abides by Patreon's guidelines are permitted.", whatever that means... Agree, this is a bit odd and vague way to put it. Community support? It sounds like "Oh, your fans love that shit? Okay, we don't mind then.", I HOPE it actually works like that, haha. And who knows, maybe it's applied to other topics such as incest and maybe that's the reason I haven't got a warning so far. All my characters are obviously adults both by canon and their appearance, I'm not a fan of a non-consent stuff and even such tame kinds of aggression involved fetishes such as BDSM, vore and other sub/dom prey/pred stuff, I'm a pretty harmless and peaceful hedonistic person who wants everyone to be happy and get mutual pleasure together (no matter if the pleasure is received through pretty degenerous acts hahaha but they're still harmless!), my art is often comical as I'm a toon artist and can be treated as humorous even when it's pretty filthy so I hope my tastes will keep protecting me from the wrath of Patreon gods.
There also rules about "glorifying animal genitalia" and animals in general and who knows if it will affect me. I mean, I did artworks with canine/horse cocks only few times and I generally prefer human ones but who knows, I can return to it eventually. Also my characters were all anthropomorphic so far but I have a love for more feral quadruped characters like Charlie Barkin, Steele and Balto or Houndoom, especially Charlie Barkin as he is my childhood crush so it's just a matter of time when I finally decide to draw him and if I do I'll do him canon, i.e. quadruped. Obviously with a big human dick but still quadruped so I don't know if it will be a red flag or not.
So, what we have in the end?
-Incest is banned but this is questionable
-The rules about non-consent materials are ambiguous and hard to tell if you violate them
-Force-feeding is banned unless it's "community supported" so it's also questionable
-Drawing quadruped toons even if they have a human dick is questionable
This still means walking a thin ice for me. For now, nothing bad have happened and it's more just premature worries but what if something bad actually happens? What should I do? Well, everybody talk about SubscribeStar recently as the most trusted option, at least for now. Also, after Gumroad banned NSFW and left thousands of content creators without their income due to all the PayPal/Mastercard bullshit, JustForFans started to suggest their help to artists in comments to almost every Gumroad Crap related tweet, setting up new options to make it more comfortable for artists to upload their artwork there.
So, I have two spare options in mind in case the worst scenario will become a reality. Despite all the concerning crap I still love Patreon because it gave me too much and literally raised me as an artist, I got too much used to it and all you guys. I guess you're used as well and don't want the good things to change. This is why I'm still gonna post everything as usual but only until I get the first bad call. If any of my materials get flagged and I receive a warning from Patreon staff, I'll start thinking about making a SubscribeStar account. In this case, I make a Patreon post about it immediately so you can be informed. And, even if by some shitty miracle my account will be instantly terminated without any warnings and second chances, I guess you guys came not from nowhere, you all have either my Furaffinity, Twitter or both and if such disaster happen I'll try to make an account on a different platform as fast as possible and inform you through a Twitter post which will be pinned or through a FA journal.
Comments
Bazil Racoondog
Oh I see, sad to hear he has people like this spoiling his life. I'm afraid to meet an asshole like this myself. It can be anything of course but being reported for nothing sounds like an equally possible scenario. But honestly it doesn't really matter for me, whatever the reason of the ban I'd never wish such fate for Antidev as I love his art no matter what.
tredain
From what I know of Anti_Dev's situation, he also has a stalker that goes out of their way to report him and harass people out of following him, so I believe in his case it's less 'he has skeletons in his closet' and more 'it just takes one asshole to report you'
