An Open Letter to Patreon | Hacker News Reader

An Open Letter to Patreon

openlettertopatreon.com

192 pointsliararoux238 comments

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?

I agree completely. They might be just adding in the persons of colour and LGB stuff to try and gain a larger audience for support. And to try and portray Patreon as racist and bigots if they contradict so. It's a shitty but effective way to gain an audience.

Does anyone know the percentile of LGB represented within the effected populace?

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".

Patreon courts amateur and niche. But I haven't seen any sign they invite porn on their platform, just that marking as adult content is an option. Same can be said for Youtube and DeviantArt.

Patreon's homepage says they protect from chargebacks. I can see why that appeals to content creators but this feels inevitable.

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.

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.

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.

Right, when Patreon started kicking off people on the fringes of the political spectrum (Nazis, Antifa, Alt-right) they moved to a 'free-speech' alternative called Hatreon:

https://hatreon.net/

That's.... kind of hilariously self-aware.

I thought you were being ironic, but...

Yeah. Case in point. Don’t like Patreon? Roll your own.

If Patreon is worried about associating their brand with pornography, they could still spin off a sister site under an entirely different domain, brand, and infrastructure, but with the same underlying codebase.

If Big Food and Big Opthalmology and Big Others can present the illusion of competition by having one parent company own all the brands on the market, why not Patreon?

>, they could still spin off a sister site under an entirely different domain, brand,

I think it's a decent idea but my guess is that it wouldn't be enthusiastically received by the adult creators.

The "Patreon" brand has already accumulated legitimacy and trust. The adult-themed content creators would want to continue to leverage that.

The creator selling sex performances gets to be in the same "digital inventory" (because it's the same patreon.com url) as the neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris, the Crash Course history education videos by John Green and his brother, the electronics disassembly videos by AvE, etc. Yes, the NSFW creators are already filtered out of general search pages and therefore hidden -- but at least they are still in the same patreon domain as the other respectable content creators.

They wouldn't want a separate url such that the customers' credit-card bill would have a line item such as Adultreon.com or Porntreon.com. Yes, the url domain name doesn't have to blatantly shout "rated X" but it does have to be sufficiently different from "patreon" so as to not taint that growing brand name. Even if you gave it a non-obvious name like noertap9.com, people would eventually mentally associate "noertap" with "rated X" anyway. (E.g. people already know that "redtube.com" which has an innocuous name -- is not about the color "red": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedTube)

They may want the legitimacy and trust of Patreon, but if the alternative is “(being) scared for their lives”, presumably they’ll get over that preference and try it out.

No one owes anyone anything, it doesn't make it wrong to post a letter.

It doesn't make it useful either.

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?

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.

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...

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.

Is there data on that? I've heard this theory before but never seen any evidence to back it up.

I don't have any sourceable data on hand unfortunately, this is what payment processors told me when I was trying to set a service up

Can confirm, fees would be high due to chargebacks and fraud in general. See here [1] a couple of numbers from a common industry biller.

https://epoch.com/business_services

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.

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-...

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...

Here is the engadget article:

https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-ba...

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.

Patreon has to follow the terms of their payment processors. If they want to be involved in porn they'd have to add a separate high risk payment processor for those content creators.

I heard porn sites have a CC processing fees of 20+%.

My mental history of Patreon may be wrong but I thought they came of trying to out-permiss Gittip.

Setting up a CCBill account for adult content doesn’t seem like it’d be that big an ask, for an organisation so outwardly committed to supporting their customers.

> This is due to the "I shouldn't have spent money on that" feeling when the user is done with the service.

Nah, due to the nature of the purchase, it's almost entirely about what happens when the monthly statement arrives and the wife gets a hold of it before you do.

"No, honey, I don't know anything about those charges on the credit card statement. Someone must have stolen our card information."

It also doesn't help that historically all those "age verification via credit card" routines inevitably enroll users in opt-out autobilling for services they legitimately don't want and end up disputing. The industry brought this on themselves.

No, it's because chargebacks are a nightmare scenario to deal with for the most part.

Well, up until recently, they were indeed afraid of the government. Let me introduce you to operation Choke Point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

>And why is the payment processor doing that? Because they're afraid of the government.

AFAIK, the only place government wrings the hand of payment providers is for terrorism or they want to specifically choke a political actor.

In Patreon's case, I'd imagine it has to do more with fraud, or more specifically how the "big" payment providers won't touch porn. (After all, the big porn sites have been processing credit cards since the dawn of the internet, just not through the same avenues as a eCommerce store would go through, if the government really cared, those sites wouldn't be able to process credit cards either).

I see Patreon uses both PayPal and Stripe as their payments processor - Stripe has pornography spelled out in its term of service as prohibited, and PayPal is far less lenient when it comes to breaking their ToS. I can imagine as Patreon grows, Stripe and PayPal (who in turn might be getting their screws turned by Visa and Mastercard), might start forcing Patreon to deal with these creators.

It's a very unfortunate spot Patreon is in, and I hope they aren't forced to cleanse their platform.

> Stripe has pornography spelled out in its term of service as prohibited

IIRC in 2011 this was due to the terms of their contract with their banking partner, Wells Fargo. I suspect this is still the case.

It's not government puritanism, it's because pornography payments take place in the shadier parts of the spectrum, where there's a hell of a lot more fraud.

In this specific case, maybe chargebacks are the problem, but in general, American puritanism is insufferable (Facebook banning reproductions of 19th century paintings, etc.) Also, it's inexplicable. I would much rather have my kids exposed to a million boobs (that they can see anywhere on the beach anyway -- and why are boobs a problem in the first place is anyone's guess) than to the horrible and dehumanizing violence of war video games where it's apparently ok to shoot at anyone and have blood squirt all over.

But, in the case of chargebacks, could it not be solved by simply having patrons agree they will suffer the chargebacks directly? Chargebacks are only a problem if the platform can't make creators cover them, no?

Excessive chargebacks raise the cost of accepting cards overall. This lowers the value Patreon can provide to their customers.

I suppose they could bifurcate the two and offer low- and high-risk plans? Not sure what it would take to implement that, though.

As to why violence and war is more acceptable I believe the answer lies in that intimacy and explicit content is much closer to home, its relatable, it attracts feelings and is also easily accessible.

On the other hand war, violence and gore are really a far away concept that does not resonate with a lot of people. Its also an established ok-thing so it being all around us in the form of entertainment makes people even more numb to the subject.

But why does your reasoning apply to the USA but not most of the rest of the western world?

>Facebook banning reproductions of 19th century paintings, etc.

My favorite example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._One_Book_Call...

This has nothing to do with showing a nipple. This was more about the porn and private sex shows. There are all kinds of legitimate reasons why one might not want to enter that business. That's their right as a business owner.

Not when it becomes impossible to exist as a business without relying on such intermediaries, e.g. VISA or MasterCard. Then they are a monopoly, and can't choose their customers anymore.

Monopoly in what? There are plenty of sites that specialize in sex cams, private shows and amateur porn, so why not just go there? There are legitimate reasons to avoid adult content in your private site as it is very easy to get into serious problems where as site owner/administrator your are legally responsible: underage actors, abuse, prostitution claims (where it is illegal) etc. just to name few.

I meant payment processors.

MasterCard, VISA and PayPal all will refuse to do business with you, or pressure you into changing your business, if you're found to be in the pornography or prostitution business. Even if that's legal in your country.

And in Sweden, banks are now collecting fees for getting cash, or paying in cash, of about 10$ each. So you can't really do anything as customer or company without MasterCard or VISA anymore.

At this point, these systems should be split up, or replaced by an international payment standard with nationalised implementors.

So how do legitimate porn sites collect money? It's a multi-billion industry, I'm sure they've solved this problem somehow.

According to Wikipedia, many of them accept bitcoins, wire transfers, etc.

Obviously, that is a significant hurdle that isn't required for other businesses.

A similar issue existed a few years back with a major German retailer, which sold cuban cigars — and MasterCard, VISA and PayPal closed their accounts over it, but luckily in Germany wire transfers, direct debit and Europay cards are common enough that they had an alternative.

This is a case where a little first-hand investigation might prove more fruitful :)

For example, Ersties.com, a site made by a German woman and owned by a Swiss company, accepts Paypal and Credit Cards.

Abbywinters, which I believe is currently Dutch, also accepts credit cards, as does GirlsOutWest.

Granted, this is not a big sample, just three whose content I happen to like, but it shows that it's hardly an impossibility.

Porn is a multi-billion dollar industry. Maybe the big players should start a payment processor.

The German economy is a multi-trillion dollar economy.

And yet, one payment processor (Europay) was simply bought by MasterCard, and the other (Girocard) can't compete anymore, because they can't influence what standards are used by Android Pay, Apple Pay, and NFC terminals (Hint: it's not the EMV standards themselves, but only specifically the large credit card networks)

Nope, you just made that up. Go to any of the well known sites and they all seem to have credit card signup pages

Also, I don't see what that has to do with Patreon.

You can’t exist as a business without patreon? Selling porn?

Someone should inform ... the vast majority of porn businesses. The rest of them don’t use Patreon for payment processing.

Without payment processors.

The argument was whether VISA, MasterCard, etc, which wield a massive influence, and have quite restrictive rules, are anticompetitive and monopolistic.

Porn-specific payments processors include eMerchant Pay, SMA, Alternative Merchant Processing, EZ Payment Solutions, ccNetPay, and Creative Merchant Options.

If you have a dozen processors to choose from, including a half dozen dedicated to your specific niche, you are not being boxed out by a monopoly.

You’re, at that point, just claiming that you are owed a profitable business model. That is not a valid complaint.

I’m not specifically talking about porn.

I’m talking about the issue that major processors such as VISA and MasterCard hold too much power in general, and either should be broken up, or shouldn’t have the power to choose their customers.

For example, a few years back a major German retailer sold cuban cigars — and MasterCard, VISA and PayPal closed their accounts over it. Luckily in Germany wire transfers, direct debit and Europay cards are common enough that they had an alternative, but it still became a major issue, and the Rossmann chain refused to do what the processors wanted, because they argued that these companies had no right to enforce US laws in Germany (and Rossmann prevailed, in the end PayPal and co had to allow Rossmann to sell such products via their payment systems).

Small independent producers may not be able to operate without Patreon. I mean, the whole point of Patreon is that it enables a huge group of creators who otherwise couldn't exist as a business.

I'm with you on puritanism, but it's not about "a nipple" it's about porn.

"[...] we also must listen to and represent those who simply make porn. Who want to be creative with their porn [...]"

Porn is legal. While GP might be semantically incorrect, the point is that porn has been a legal part of American culture for at least 100 years. It makes absolutely no sense to discriminate against processing payments for one of America's largest entertainment industries.

American culture, you mean a mix between African, Native American, Asian, Polynesian, and Latin American cultures? especially Latin American? You can't grow a culture with 100 years.

That's some weird gatekeeping. Culture is a collection of social norms shared by a local population. It's not determined by time, or Race, it's determined by action.

Most Americans live similarly to their neighbors, and have for hundreds of years.

? American culture was mostly imported from Europe during its infancy. Latin America was barely even a thing then.

I don't think that puritanism is the problem here. Adult content, especially users made one, is notoriously hard and risky to moderate. Just one underage model on your site might be enough to bring everything down, stain your reputation for a long time and under right consequences, even land you in jail. I guess payment processors refuse to cater such type of business for precisely the same reason as nobody wants headlines such as "Payment Processor X is used to fund child porn".

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

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.

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

What is the network effect of Patreon? Whatever it is, I don’t consider it to be very strong. Many creators are discovered through their own channels first before their fans learn about their Patreon.

OpenCollective made its way into the recurring payments market with relative ease. “All” they needed to do was cater to an underserved niche (open source) that could be serviced better on its own stand-alone platform as opposed to being one of many categories on Patreon.

Something very similar is happening with Kickstarter. See Fig as an example of a specialized crowdfunding platform that’s carving its own niche by catering specifically to games.

https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/10/16125828/fig-first-profita...

Consider the perspective of the "patreon" (funder). You choose maybe 5 creators you want to watch and fund. With Patreon you have a convenient place to do that - you're spoonfed new content and you enter your payment info to a single trusted third party, not each individual creator.

I also assume there are great options for discovering new related content and creators.

Disclaimer: I never used Patreon, I only assume that's how it works.

It has some network effect in that for users already on Patreon, starting to give money to another creator is a lot more low-effort compared to signing up on yet another site or handing yet another party payment details. Depending on how big the motivation is to give money to someone, that can be significant.

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.

I guess it depends on what you consider high profit. From https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/18/patreon-pushes-as-youtube-... looks like Patreon has 50k creators and 1M+ patrons.

The challenge could well be that whilst they're growing and making money, they're not making enough money to satisfy their VC backers, having taken $47m in funding so far.

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.

I think you're grossly underestimating the work involved in being a payment handler - even just the legal work alone would be crushing. It certainly isn't going to be a side-business for a lone developer.

> "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!

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

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.

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.

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.

I think there are such strong network effects for many of these companies that competition is unrealistic.

They are in many ways like power grid operators: Infrastructure. They should be regulated as such.

Edit: Since there are some downvotes here, let me clarify what I think regulation should look like:

Visa/Stripe/PayPal/Amazon/Facebook have to service every business that is not illegal under non-discriminatory terms. (Like F/RAND for technical standards.)

Simple rule. One they can point to when moral guardians come knocking and demand they stop doing business with the devil.

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.

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.

Adults whinged constantly before the internet too. The only difference is that you used to not be able to hear them unless you were at the same water cooler/bar at the same time.

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

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...

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

I'm pretty sure Stripe and Paypal are Patreon's two payment processors, so I'm not surprised that they're having the same issues.

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.

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.

> 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.

I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that you are not a creator on Patreon...

Patreon kicking people off is a serious issue because Patreon works so much better than all of the competition, from Flattr to Gratipay to Paypal to Bitcoin. As it happens, I'm a creator on Patreon myself (https://www.patreon.com/gwern), at ~$600 a month. I wouldn't go homeless or anything if I was kicked off Patreon (thanks, Bitcoin), but it would hurt me a lot. When I started using Patreon in July 2015, it immediately roughly quadrupled my monthly earnings from donations as compared to anything I'd ever gotten from Flattr, Gratipay, Paypal, Google AdSense, or Amazon Affiliates, Bitcoin either with or without Coinbase (and much more than that comparing to May/June but that's a little unfair since they tended to be spiky). That is, incidentally, despite Patreon having net fees of 2-5x what the others do. And the total amount has since tripled.

I hardly even advertised it! (Heck, I hardly even advertise it now or provide any rewards or anything.) Now that is a network effect.

Could people have given me money other ways? Sure. Heck, some of my readers invented or worked at the payment methods in question, and were fully capable of it. And they did, a little. And yet, I finally get around to signing up for Patreon and boom. There were people who were willing to give me substantial amounts of money... but only via Patreon. They were set up for Patreon, and that made donating easy and convenient for them, and this makes all the difference in the world. One website, one account, one payment.

Saying Patreon has no real network effects or can easily be replicated or that being kicked off of it would be trivial is the strict contemporary equivalent of the HN discussion of Dropbox where everyone writes it off because 'you can simply rsync your files to your personal server'. It sounds reasonable; and yet it is profoundly wrong in every way that matters to real people.

Is being kicked off Patreon going to hurt those creators? Oh yes. Quite aside from the porn-specific issues with the alternatives, just leaving Patreon is costly - they'll be lucky if they can scratch together even half what they were getting before. Call that 'other ways' if you wish, but I say it's spinach and I say to hell with it.

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.

Those two things seem to be separate enough. Not only is there a very blurry line in between the two, but also creation of the disallowed content is much safer to do there than to apply to a shady studio to get yourself out there.

So the second question would propably be why is porn disallowed in the first place? Is it the payment processors who don't want to deal with chargebacks? Something to do with investors, perhaps their own "morals"?

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.

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

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..."

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?

See the comment by "nippples" above:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15548719

> If you don't fit the target audience of the porn industry, you have to look elsewhere, like Patreon.

Except, you know, maybe Patreon doesn't want that.

I'm skeptical of this idea that the porn industry is discriminatory. Do you have any stats to back that up?

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 ?

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.

It may have been the "literally scared for our lives" part.

If it's important to include the bit, then why stop the list there? What about apostates? Autists? Fat people? People who are otherwise unemployed?

I agree with the other poster. This feels like not only emotional blackmail, but tired, overused emotional blackmail. You can very reasonably bring up the angle of people who depend on the platform for their income without dragging around the identity politics baggage with it.

Maybe it's just important to include that bit, because it actually reflects the experience of the authors? The community that signed the letter? Are those groups you mention actually disproportionately affected by this change?

Either way, this whole letter consisted of a few sentences that brought in the identity angle. These sentences correctly show that this change disproportionately affects some (minority) communities. Non discriminatory changes can have discriminatory effects. This is important.

The anti-PC crowd immediately latched onto these few sentences and now HN top upvoted thread is all about how the letter made the HN crowd feel uncomfortable.

When cis white men get threatened with losing their livelihoods by over-active PC campaigners, do you complain that the fact that they are cis white men features in the story? When these stories feature the fact that that man has three children to feed, do you complain about the emotional blackmail? Because I sure as heck don't remember any discussion threads on HN going: I agree that he shouldn't be fired over this, but why do they have to drag this tired, overused emotional blackmail into it?

> When cis white men get threatened with losing their livelihoods by over-active PC campaigners, do you complain that the fact that they are cis white men features in the story?

If they'd start their complaint with "we as white men" I'd get tired of reading it pretty early too.

> When these stories feature the fact that that man has three children to feed, do you complain about the emotional blackmail?

I'll admit I'm less tired of this particular brand of emotional blackmail. Having children is holding responsibility for other people's lives.

> These sentences correctly show that this change disproportionately affects some (minority) communities.

The letter didn't say anything about what makes the LGBT "disproportionately" affected by this change. What I read was

> We’re writing you today both as adult creators and concerned individuals about free, legal, expression. We’re deeply disappointed in your handling of clarity with regards to adult content on your platform, and the mixed messages we have been receiving.

Which seems like a reasonable concern. Followed non sequitur by:

> 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.

Why is Patreon having a fuzzy stand against pornography disproportionately affecting the LGBT community?

> Why is Patreon having a fuzzy stand against pornography disproportionately affecting the LGBT community?

First of all, they say the vulnerable among them are disproportionately LGBT. They do not say that it affects an LGBT creator differently from a straight creator all else being equal.

Given that there are massive mainstream porn companies that cover most of the non-queer market, it stands to reason that the creators on Patreon are disproportionately queer. Thus any change on Patreon, postivie or negative, will affect queer performers disproportionately by that fact alone.

Changes that are not intrinsically discriminating, can have discriminatory effects.

If you will further grant that LGBT people suffer discrimination outside of Patreon, they will be over represented among the most vulnerable creators by that fact. Thus they will be disproportionately represented amongst the vulnerable content creators on patreon, affected by this change.

Let's take this to another area. Homeless youth shelters. Let's say a politician somewhere campaigns on closing down local homeless youth shelters.

You could say: Closing down these shelters would hit the most vulnerable among us – disproportionately queer, trans, disabled, people of color and those whose first language is not English - hardest.

Because, in fact, all these groups are strongly over represented among American homeless. Drastically in some cases:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_among_LGBT_youth_...

Just to clarify, the aforementioned disproportionate representation is with "street children" not homeless youth as a whole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_children#United_States

a) What does that clarify? What's the difference?

b) From the literature I looked at, and the very wikipedia article I linked, it is true for homeless youth as a whole.

E.g. the very first sentence in the abstract:

> A disproportionate number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth experience homelessness each year in the United States.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4098056/

> The anti-PC crowd immediately latched onto these few sentences and now HN top upvoted thread is all about how the letter made the HN crowd feel uncomfortable.

I'm pro-PC and have routinely come out in defence of the concept here on HN. Last year there was a rash of MRA crap on HN, and I was arguing against it regularly. I also have no problem with porn itself, and view it myself. Now, all this being said, the opening paragraph in the article is ridiculously overwrought and childish. It reeks of tribal politics - if you can't understand why "the other side" never accepts what you have to say, it's because of hyperbole like this. It's the left-wing's version of "Won't somebody think of the children" that gets stuck everywhere it can, regardless of veracity[1]?

Keep in mind that this is what the letter is basically implying: "Patreon has to support pornography because blacks/queers/disabled people will die if they don't". As someone else pointed out, it's positioning Patreon to be painted as a bigot if they don't back down. Patreon can't put in a rule saying "pornography is okay, but only if you're PoC/disabled/homosexual", so what the letter is actually demanding in real terms is full support of pornography. Did you notice that just like Patreon and the Supreme Court, the letter author did not provide a clear definition of pornography versus adult content, to perhaps guide Patreon? Since it's a fuzzy line no matter where it's drawn, the only way to satisfy the author is to allow porn outright.

The author is free to make those claims - business is business, and stretching the truth is pretty normal when your business is under siege - but we shouldn't be taking the comments on face value and defending them. They should be scrutinised like any other business missive.

> These sentences correctly show that this change disproportionately affects some (minority) communities.

The sentences claim it. They don't show it, correctly or otherwise.

> When cis white men get threatened with losing their livelihoods by over-active PC campaigners, do you complain that the fact that they are cis white men features in the story?

How often do those stories come up? Which livelihoods are being lost by over-active PC campaigners? But yes, here on HN if an article does lead off with a sob story, usually someone will complain, particularly if it's long-form journalism. Hell, people routinely complain about sensationalism in article titles here, often without even visiting the link.

[1] Possibly the most remotely-detached of these arguments I've seen so far: in my home state, the right-wing party argued against a new public holiday with "won't somebody think of the children". One more public holiday than the next state over > businesses will go there instead > your children won't have jobs. Seriously. "Won't somebody think of the children" used against a public holiday...

You are correct that the article doesn't show it, but claims it.

So your point is that you think the claim is wrong? Because, as I've said elsewhere, I think it's prima facie extremely plausible. The idea that minorities are overrepresented amongst the most vulnerable populations, especially when several dimensions of marginalization intersect (in this case adult content creation) is not at all far fetched. Instead it seems fairly obvious.

As such I would put the burden of prove on you when you claim the authors misrepresent their community in order to advance their point.

Now I agree with your point that the fuzzy line is problematic. And patreon can't solve this on their own. I think regulation could, but which politician will stand up for that? The issue the authors have can't be completely resolved in this context, but patreon shifted their policy contrary to how they were marketing themselves to creators before (and what they got good press for). I think that's a good reason to be publicly upset and push back.

It's a bit rich that you require me to provide proof to back up my claims, but are happy to settle for 'plausible' in the article. Why am I held to the stricter standard? How can I disprove something where no solid claims are made in the first place? The article claims that Patreon cutting out that section of their business has made people afraid they're literally going to die as a result, and you think that's extremely plausible?

Only 3 days ago I mentioned I was getting tired of this current fad to dismiss commentary by demanding proof

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15529895

> So your point is that you think the claim is wrong?

In any case, I think there's some truth to what they say, but it's ridiculously overblown (hence "stretching the truth" above). They played the 'social duty to society's vulnerables' pretty hard, and yet plenty of those content creators are not vulnerable. Nor disabled. Nor are PoC. Nor are LGBT. Why do we assume PoC and LGBT are more vulnerable by default here? Where should the line of social responsibility be drawn? Should Patreon be shamed into a business model they don't want because of a single person who fits the 'vulnerable' description? 10 people? 100?

You complained about their lack of proof first.

I have given arguments [1] why I think their claim is plausible. You haven't given any why you think it's wrong (other than a generic "why should it be true?", which is nothing if not demanding proof from them).

[1] The mentioned communities are overrepresented in any risk category, from drug addiction, to HIV, to homelessness (the sole exception I know of would be suicide). They tend to be more overrepresented when marginalisation dimensioons intersect, as they do here.

Being rational, and without arguing either way, we can certainly ask about the logic here: let's agree that the stated groups are more "vulnerable" than other people. Is the enrichment for vulnerability among the NSFW content creators a necessary part of the appeal to Patreon? Would the appeal not be reasonable, or be less compelling, if the creators were not enriched for vulnerable individuals?

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.

Because personal identity becomes more important to people in sexual content, and so sexual content is a disproportionate market for people in those demographics?

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.

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.

You're using the same kind of 'emotional blackmail' speech, and it is annoying because it forces the discussion into a Manichean stereotype of good (poor, weak, discriminated) vs evil (big company full of white guys trying to stomp on the weak).

This is bad for the debate as it tries to shut down all opposition (and I'm not even opposing) and remove all possibility of nuance. This is taking the conversation hostage.

There's saying that this might greatly impact the (especially vulnerable) LGBT+ population, which is a very valid point and should be taken into account

And then, there's tearjerker speech like :

> 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.

> We know people who would be homeless if it wasn’t for making porn on Patreon – and it’s not a small number.

Which just feels like strong-arming the reader into your opinion

Would you not be "literally scared" for your life when faced with the prospect of becoming homeless? I would be. Why is it a "tearjerker speech" if that is your situation and if you want that situation to be taken into account as they do? If you think they're lying say so. Calling this a "tearjerker speech" strikes me as dishonest.

I agree. This is ridiculous and hypocritical.

People somehow seriously claim that the authors should hide what community they represent, hide the unintended discriminatory effects of the policy changes, and not be so emotional about losing their livelihoods, because it makes them feel uncomfortable to read an emotional appeal in an open letter.

I don’t want people to “hide what community they represent”, but I also don’t want them to use that fact as a bargaining chip instead of arguments.

Part of a negotiation is stating which parties are involved and what their considerations are.

> People somehow seriously claim that the authors should hide what community they represent,

Starting the letter with "We’re writing you today both as adult creators and concerned individuals about free, legal, expression." seems to show the community they represent is "Adult creators and concerned individuals about free, legal, expression".

> hide the unintended discriminatory effects of the policy changes,

They shouldn't hide it, but they should at least show some evidence for it.

> and not be so emotional about losing their livelihoods,

They can be emotional all they want, but it's maybe not the best argument to change a company's policy. If it's masquerading as an argument, then it's emotional blackmail.

> because it makes them feel uncomfortable to read an emotional appeal in an open letter.

I don't mind emotional appeals when they actually make sense.

Do you have any evidence that:

> "Adult creators and concerned individuals about free, legal, expression"

on patreon are not whom this letter claims they are? If so you are accusing the letter of lying, without any evidence yourself.

What level of evidence would the adult content creators have to bring to the table to satisfy your demands? Representative scientific surveys?

Why will you not take their word for whom they are? Do you somehow know that community better?

Do you not think it prima facie plausible that LGBT, PoC, disabled, etc... are over represented among the most vulnerable of the content creators? (which is the only thing the letter claims)

Because by Jove, that's a damn plausible claim if I've ever heard one.

> Why is it a "tearjerker speech" if that is your situation and if you want that situation to be taken into account as they do?

It's "tearjerker" because it conforms to the definition of tearjerker: "A highly sentimental story, drama, or performance, often intended to arouse heartache or sympathy." [1]

They blame Patreon for their vulnerability and use pity to win an argument. Fact is, they placed all their eggs in one risky basket, and now that basket is gone. They have themselves to blame. There are lots of LGBT people out there who aren't scared for their lives because Patreon discriminates against porn. This doesn't affect the LGBT community, it affects people who bet all their income on producing adult content on the Patreon. Arguing that LGBT are scared for their lives has nothing to do with the actual problem: "we can't make adult content on Patreon anymore, and we have no other income, but we don't want to find a job so please have pity [on the LGBT who are scared for their lives]".

[1] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/tearjerker

If those two statements form a "highly sentimental story, drama, or performance" every Reuters report does.

If you're convinced of the importance of ignoring misery one believes to be self-inflicted you should have that argument, though.

>They blame Patreon for their vulnerability and use pity to win an argument. Fact is, they placed all their eggs in one risky basket, and now that basket is gone. They have themselves to blame.

What other basket is there? I thought that's the whole point of this letter, that patreon has become their lifeline but now even that is clipped.

"scared for our lives" sounds like the same line police officers trot out and repeat over and over when they kill someone they ought not have. I think that sort of claim evokes a negative reaction when it seems like the sentiment is unfounded based on the circumstances because it feels like the person saying it isn't being genuine but just trying to manipulate people.

A disproportionate number of homeless youth identify as LGBT+. LGBT+ youth are overrepresented in the populations of youth who are at risk of arrest. Is it unfounded to assume that those same people are maybe dependent on precarious work, like creating porn to sell on a third-party platform, to make a living?

> A disproportionate number of homeless youth identify as LGBT+. LGBT+ youth are overrepresented in the populations of youth who are at risk of arrest.

I haven't heard that before. Is there any data to support this?

I quoted the Wikipedia almost verbatim. Studies are referenced in the footnotes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_among_LGBT_youth_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_people_in_prison

Just to clarify, the aforementioned disproportionate representation is with "street children" not homeless youth as a whole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_children#United_States

I don't understand. Could you clarify how (where?) the referenced article is countering that statement?

Even if that's the case, it'd be a moot point unless they are arguing that making child porn is acceptable if you would be homeless instead.

The ability to leverage performative victimhood invalidates any claim that you are weak.

If you are actually weak, you will do anything not to draw attention to your self, as you will not be able to control the perceptions or actions of others.

I guess the key phrase there is "leverage". Does your performace succeed? In the case of trans people on US coasts, this seems to be changing. For a short time, their identity had leverage, but the fact that this discussion is criticizing the authors of the letter for trying to leverage trans victim-hood, suggests that this leverage is waning.

As an example of a group without victim-hood leverage, see NAMBLA [1], which represents another sexual orientation, but one which bears no leverage. Another victimized group with seemingly no leverage are those victims of child abuse who are suffering from multiple personality disorder. I know, in the abstract one would say that a victim of child abuse certainly has leverage, but if you read the appeals by those who suffer from severe psychological disorders as a result, you will immediately feel yourself recoil in disgust and grant them no audience. People tend to not see "monsters" as victims, and if we find people too weird or frightening we don't see them as victims. What other groups have no leverage? Perhaps some drug users, we tend to blame them for their problems.

I would argue, that leverage is sometimes directly related to power. For example, the Jews were rich before WWII, and are still rich today. Since the holocaust, their victim-hood has born unparalleled leverage. However, in the same holocaust, the Roma people of the Czech Republic were treated just as badly as the Jews, and being poor, far fewer of them escaped. Yet the Roma have almost no leverage from their holocaust victim-hood.

But do you think that trans people have power?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Man/Boy_Love_As...

  > But do you think that trans people have power?

In this particular case this identity is instrumentalised in order to modify the behaviour of Patreon.

This simply wouldn't be done so readily unless the identity within this context carried power.

I do not think that trans people in general have power. However, a lack of power in one context, can sometimes be an arbitrage opportunity in contexts where an oppressed identity is currency.

I'm not against this but the underlying power dynamics are too interesting to be ignored.

That said, I dislike the usage of the phrase "literally scared for their lives". This phrase is meant to be used to call on others to defend lives and here it is being used to call on other's to defend an ability to make money selling porn. Crying wolf undermines the ability for truly endangered people to ask for help. It is ethically repulsive to me that people that consider themselves good dilute the meaning of cries for help for base political expediency. By doing this, they may well deprive the most desperately helpless people of their only means for help.

It seems obvious to me that they're conflating economic opportunity with safety, as it is the only viable political position left to them. As has been established elsewhere, companies do not owe workers a means to make money. I do not personally agree with deplatforming, but there is currently no right to a job, and, if such a right was to exist, it would not be possible to administer it fairly depending on the relative oppression/privilege of a person. On the other hand, I guess accrued wealth and number of potential income sources could be seen as reducing the likelihood of homelessness and perhaps we should use this to determine whether a loss of income could affect somebody's safety. (In this case I think that's unlikely: there are so many other online social networks that are supportive.)

Demographically it is a rather odd group too. It basically includes most of the humans on Earth (i.e., first language is not English) and excludes what comes down to heterosexual cisgender able-bodied white Americans/Australians/British/Canadians/Kiwis.

That kind of exclusive categorization of people is harmful to the debate, and comes across as trollish.

I don't think that is how it's intended. I took it to be the typical US centric view, in which case "not speaking English" translates to "not speaking the locally dominant language".

Also note that the language in the article is not exclusionary. They explicitly say: This is hurting the vulnerable among us, who are disproportionately XYZ. They don't say it only hurts XYZ, they don't say it hurts all XYZ, they say it hurts vulnerable people.

Do you think this isn't a relevant point to make? I think it is. It shows that even if the practice isn't prima facie discriminatory (and isn't intended as such), its effects are.

I do think that it is valid to point out people who might be harmed by the policy they are opposing, but I fear that the language used appears to engender a sense of exclusivity of victimhood; e.g.:

> Stand behind your women and LGBT creators.

The gist of this is probably that Patreon is being called upon to stand behind all vulnerable, oppressed, or marginalized creators, but their language keeps using explicit categories that effectively imply 'everybody but able-bodied heterosexual white men'. I find that implication of exclusion to be troublesome, because it polarizes the debate (a clear 'them' versus 'us' separation makes itself felt), rather than attempting to find common ground.

Don't get me wrong, I support the general critique they are presenting. But language is a powerful tool that can make allies as well as alienate — I feel that their radical use of language (whether intentional or not) may unwittingly achieve the latter.

Well then quote the whole bit:

> Take a stand behind your creators who make revolutionary independant content. Stand behind your women and LGBT creators.

In my reading they do always lead with the general call to stand behind vulnerable creators, before specifying some more affected groups:

> We know people who would be homeless if it wasn’t for making porn on Patreon – and it’s not a small number. We know people who now employ many queer performers, workers, subcontractors – all working to make beautiful content.

That is inclusive: There is no identity for whom being homeless would not suck, and they don't limit that sentence in any way.

Reality is also that if you are a porn director targeting a cis male audience you have other options than patreon to get work.

But seriously, I am fortunate to be cis male and heterosexual. Yet still active in a scene that is not represented in the mainstream (and where content creators are often targeted by credit card blocks). I had absolutely no problem reading that letter despite not getting a specific call out to my community in it. Because almost all of the authors there are not queer disabled gender-fluid people of color. They might be one of the above, or two. But they wrote a letter that gives shout outs to all these different dimensions that don't affect them directly. And it strikes me as a misreading that they intended this list of dimensions in which you can be out of the mainstream to be exhaustive.

I see zero evidence in this letter that the authors would consider an alternative independent cis male porn creator, who values the independence that patreon brings, not one of them. As somehow excluded from that call.

Queer-normative cis/hetero exclusionary behaviour exists, and I've seen it. In my reading this letter does not contain any.

Yeah, when I hear "people of color and those whose first language is not English" my mind goes to some poor untouchables who live in a slum in India, and not speaking English can't work in a call centre so they have to resort to prostitution. In which case they probably don't give a damn about Patreon's NSFW policy if they have heard of Patreon at all.

Shows how out of touch these people are with reality and the problems real people face around the world.

Agree. As a white straight guy (although English is not my first language), who actually lived through a war in my country, I find this “_literally_ scared for our lives”, disgusting self victimization.

As a soldier myself, I respect what you have done for your country. And as a non-English speaker myself, I would have found it difficult to sympathize with this text a few years ago, having difficulty understanding why the Americans complain so much about everything ;) However the more and more I learn about America the more I have come to sympathize with viewpoints like this after hearing about their everyday problems. Of the pornography artists that use Patreon that I know, a disproportionate amount of them are LGBTQ (I suspect it is a form of escapism), and it no longer surprises me at all that they are worried this will disproportionately harm them with the threat of homelessness. Many of them are young and cannot afford medical treatments for mental diseases (which are increasing in America), and while the difficulty of getting a job is already quite difficult, getting one and keeping it with untreated ADHD is even harder. For these friends, drawing pornography is not only the a way of expressing themselves and their identity but also the only way to avoid staying off the streets.

I might have also said "suck it up, get a job" to my friends a few years ago, but after knowing several of them with ADHD and other problems who cannot afford meds I can no longer say that. The American system is cold and unfeeling and would grind young people like this into dust if they had no other outlet. Patreon gave them an opportunity to put food on their plates and live under a roof, and now it is being taken away. I would be scared for my livelyhood.

You are part of the problem. Who do you think you are to judge these people for expressing their fears as not valid fear? Let me guess: you are one of the white male techbros of HN, secure in their income, housing and medical care (so far, I am too) who are quick to put down those who are less fortunate in their lives (this is where we differ). Read more "me too" stories and listen instead of judging.

Read https://www.facebook.com/nicole.stamp/posts/1015611659568934... especially.

> 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)

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.

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?

I don't think card companies and banks are trying to be moral police, they just don't want to be in the business of holding drug money that the feds can then seize.

It’s about money not morals. Porn is associated with much higher fraud and chargeback rates than other commercial sectors.

It’s always about money. It is always, always about money.

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.

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.

Hatreon is an alternative that has no speech policing.

Hatreon has also extended an open invite to these content creators: https://twitter.com/Radomysisky/status/922833371075620866

the stream provide interesting information for the context.

they use Stripe for payment and Stripe apparently does not allow "Adult content and services" ( https://stripe.com/us/prohibited-businesses ) among other things.

That name can't be serious but a trolling attempt?

Go to the site and have a look at "Featured Creators": Stormfront, Daily Stormer and Richard Spencer will be recognizable to anyone these days. Most of the rest (like Andrew Auernheimer aka Weev) are recognizable to the more online of us. Should make the name and the trollish nature of the name make more sense to know that. It isn't not serious.

It was invite only at the beginning, marketed as the place for the alt-right when Patreon enforced their policies on some high profile people, and those invites went out to specific people so take their whole "open to anyone with no speech limits" with a mountain of salt.

"Free Speech" has become in the current vernacular as merely being right wing hate speech.

I'm convinced that is partly a tactic like the milk and OK sign stuff. Partly serious and based on a real disagreement about hate speech, partly laughing at embracing something and watching everyone else decide that now they have to absolutely denounce it.

Then they do something like organize a campaign of complaints against leftist and vocal anti-alt-right Prof. Ciccariello-Maher at Drexel for his speech, get him put on leave, and laugh at the centrist and leftist rubes falling over themselves in confusion.

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.

>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.

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

Original site, maybe.

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".

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

They're the hardest people to defend and that's exactly why their freedom of speech needs to be defended.

When you can't say 'fuck', you can't say 'fuck the draft':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen_v._California

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.

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"

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.

Spankcoin to the rescue! (maybe)

https://ico.spankstream.com/

Porntreon? No seriously, they need competitors.

Too many whales, not enough fish.

Nice wording:

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

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

https://www.engadget.com/2015/12/02/paypal-square-and-big-ba...

"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." "

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

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

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

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.

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.

You're right, there are downsides to porn as it is, but there is no reason it could not be a perfect industry.

It is because of our barbaric taboos against women who appear in porn that revenge porn has power. It is because of our barbaric taboos that the porn industry is so shady. We should fight those taboos, and fight for the dignity of porn actresses.

These flaws in the industry are all the more reason to pay the actresses directly through Patreon. Why should we get our pornography through shady websites on which there is no accountability as to the origin of the images?

If being uncomfortable while working was to be made illegal, there'd be few minimum-wage jobs left. From burger-flipping to call centers, people do it because they have to, not because they want to. Coercion is a different kettle of fish, but being uncomfortable at your work is a pretty normal state of being.

We're talking about morality, not laws.

So am I. You didn't seriously think I was suggesting we outlaw minimum wage jobs?

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

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.

"Family friendly" and morality are not global concepts though. Things that might be ok in NL/DE might offend half of the US, things that the US doesn't care about might offend secular countries in the middle east.

If you want to be a global platform, morales are tricky to get right.

I believe it's best to let the consumer decide. Force people to mark their content as adult and hide adult content by default. Maybe with age verification to enable it, for countries that want that?

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 [2] https://www.patreon.com/posts/103684

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.

> There's plenty that is uploaded without the person's consent (sometimes by a bitter ex)...

That is not pornography but a crime.

The issue is that it's extremely hard to discern between both.

Not at all difficult, really. It is only difficult in the sense that it is difficult to tell the difference between a snake and an elephant if all you can do is feel its tail. If you actually know what is happening then the distinction is obvious.

A pornographic photo does not necessarily imply a consent form.

Somebody that watches videos or looks at photos does not "actually know what is happening". They are trusting this exercise to the distributor, and if the distributor is just a medium that does not concern themselves with checking for consent (e.g. most free sites), then you have just delegated to somebody this is not performing this work for you. In that case, you have no way of being able to gauge whether some pornography has had somebody else's consent or not.

Consider also, the idea that not all pornographic actresses/actors are happy with having their content distributed to non-paying consumers, and I think it's highly likely that you and people you know have broken the law and not received consent for at least some of the content you've viewed.

In the US, pornography websites are required to maintain documentation of age and consent [1]. I'm delegating that trust to the FBI. If the FBI isn't doing it's job, well that's a different problem.

I will, however, grant that there are tremendous problems with the porn industry. That is absolutely besides the point. These problems are:

A) not unique in any way to porn. Large quantities of clothing and tennis shoes are made by indentured child laborers.

B) only go to further cement my opinion that the actual actresses should be paid for their work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adult_film_industry_regulation...

That's true but it doesn't hold for the amateur porn that is often found on free sites.

People only watch porn because it is anonymous. This is no different from piracy. People steal only because they think they think they won't get caught (or give some arguments about DRM to convince themselves stealing is OK which is completely beside the point). Most people won't pay for porn if it was non-anonymous. So, I don't agree that it has no moral downsides. I so agree with your comments on icecreams and fidget spinners. They are terrible too.

Lets ban icecream!

It's not every day I see the tyranny of the majority elevated to an ethical system.

Porn is extraordinarily destructive. To say that it has no moral downsides is incredible:

https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/

I am totally and completely cool with male porn addiction as an alternative to rape:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201601/ev...

Lesser evil and all that.

is this what the conversation has come to? a foregone conclusion that all men ought to be drugged up on porn so we don’t go out raping and pillaging the countryside?

we’re not all like this. i’m not like this. and i don’t like being told that i am.

That amounts to wildly misconstruing my comment.

i disagree. you’re welcome to explain how your statement does not amount to keeping men hooked on porn so they don’t rape (because that’s the alternative).

No one is required to be hooked on porn. But if you look at the big picture, more porn results in less rape, sexual assault and even child sex abuse. It does come with the downside that some people get hooked on it.

I am wholly supportive of helping people break their porn addiction. I am not supportive of trying to get rid of all porn everywhere as the means to protect a few people from themselves.

You are horribly miscontruing my remarks. Doubling down like this makes it look intentional.

that is your opinion. why would i purposely misconstrue your comment?

i wish your answer now had been your original answer. i urge you not to assume malicious intent (that would be malicious) and consider that your original comment might have been saved from scrutiny given expansion.

I am not assuming malicious intent.

But you continue to use tactics that look openly hostile, not like an attempt to communicate in good faith.

Also, all of the rebuttals here seem to assume that the people who wind up addicted to porn are innocent victims, wholly unrelated to the people who would otherwise commit sex crimes. I see no reason to make such an assumption. I also see no reason to believe that life as a person with a porn addiction is vastly worse than life as a person who can't constrain themselves from committing sex crimes. I have reason to believe doing things like that comes with much more personal downside, even if you posit that they don't feel guilty about it.

You are definitely misconstruing her comment here. The fact that porn addiction may lessen the number of men that commit rape could be empirically true without any implication that all men are rapists (etc.)

there is a difference between keeping men hooked on porn and allowing them to watch it. It's like the whole thing with Catholic priests being pedophiles. Non-Catholic priests aren't forced to marry, and yet they are far less likely to become pedophiles.

> It's like the whole thing with Catholic priests being pedophiles. Non-Catholic priests aren't forced to marry, and yet they are far less likely to become pedophiles.

While in many respects the response of the Catholic heirarchy to sexual abuse of minors by priests was beyond appalling and inexcusable, the incidence of such abuse (or accusations of such abuse) from every comparison I've seen was similar to other religions groups, schools, and youth organizations like scouting.

> from every comparison I've seen was similar to other religions groups, schools, and youth organizations like scouting.

I have just spent a while looking at the statistics. I have found a huge number of incomparable, incomplete, and incorrectly analyzed statistics, and many strong claims that catholic priests are no more likely to abuse. However, I have found nothing remotely objective pointing in either direction. Have you found any actually objective studies which show anything meaningful as to the question of whether priests are more, less, or equally likely to abuse?

It's fine if you two want to dig into the stats, but I don't think that element is really essential to the point that "Similarly, not all unmarried people are child molesters, contrary to the impression you might have from all the pedophile Catholic priests in the news."

FWIW and similar provisos.

"Not all smokers have lung cancer. Therefore, smoking does not cause lung cancer."

It's very close to saying something like rape is fine as it prevents killing. Both are kinds if crimes (no matter what the legal status of porn is, it destroys lives of actors and promotes harmful stereotypes and actions towards women too often, which makes it very close to a crime).

No, it is much closer to saying "If you can't meet the strict standard of celibacy outside of marriage historically required by the Catholic church, at least use a condom. It is a lesser sin."

(From what I gather, the church historically kind of looked the other way on condom use of young men seeing ladies of the evening as a practical matter. It was not "approved," but it was vastly better than spreading disease and multiplying the number of illegitimate children in the world.)

You're omitting porn companies that create erotica in a sex-positive and respectful way which only makes sense if you're trying to reinforce your own existing prejudices.

Not everybody considers self-harm to be immoral, you know?

Of course porn addiction is real, but not everyone is addicted to porn. In-fact, the vast majority of porn viewers are not. I'm %100 sure that social media addiction is more prevalent and more destructive to those who have it. When I watch porn, I do so until I reach orgasm, and then I'm satisfied for at least 24 hours. I find hacker news to be FAR FAR more addictive and destructive. Porn helps me sleep, HN is quite the opposite ;).

That multiple potential mates theory is a pretty silly reason to hate on porn. Anyone who lives in a major metro area and rides public transport is absolutely overwhelmed with close contact with beautiful women and I don't see that as being somehow harmful or destructive. By that same logic we should go full on Saudi/ISIS and force everyone to wear hijab!

Just to clarify, I don't mean "close contact" in a lewd or sexualized way.

Not sure citing a notoriously unreliable quack site that uses evidence as well as a typical anti-vaxxer page is helping your case here.

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.

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.

5% is a pretty small middleman 'take'. I agree with the 'you shouldn't rely on an independent entity you don't have leverage over', but not because they're taking a cut.

last I checked it was 10%.

They charge 5% for processing payments which is 2% higher than paypal and stripe charge for processing payments, which they are certainly pocketing as hidden profit. Which is lying, another reason not to work with them.

It is _so easy_ to set up a wordpress site and start taking payments using something like wp-invoice or woocommerce. You don't need a fancy custom theme. The built in themes work great, nobody is going to care if a graphic artist uses a custom theme or not.

Fair enough, I just took it from here, which doesn't list the specific processing fee. https://patreon.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/204606125-How-...

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

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

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.

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.

Services like Patreon function as something of a proxy that obscures the nature of your business from the credit card processors, who otherwise won't let you conduct adult-related transactions through their platforms.

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

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

.. after 9pm.

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

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.

Fuck is more of an adjective or conjunction in the UK, whereas in the US it’s definitely considered profanity.

No, it's definitely profanity in the UK too. Every now and again some profanity makes it through and someone has to make an apology. Today it's for a hilarious spoonerism on BBC Breakfast: https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/4762492/bbc-breakfast-...

Edit: guidelines at http://www.channel4.com/producers-handbook/ofcom-broadcastin... or http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidance/live-outpu... (content warning: actually says the banned words, obviously). There's something very funny about imagining the serious discussion that must have resulted in these documents.

Yes in the UK. Or on the rest of Europe. In many other places which consider themselves free, there are a lot of things you can't say on TV, "Fuck" being one of them.

There is no beeping on German TV at all, though you may be prosecuted if you say something illegal (slander e.g.).

In in a globalized world we're ending up with the lowest common denominator.

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