so, a week after patreon abruptly permabanned hundreds of fetish accounts (with no warning & despite not violating patreon's tos) i'm now seeing a prominent 18+ artist getting his patreon frozen with no explanation at all as to what triggered it, or directive as to what he can do to recover his primary source of income. (link to tweet)
when the alarms started ringing on patreon's crackdown against fetish art, this is the slippery slope we were warning you about. dovegraveyard's work is not particularly niche in terms of content - he does primarily m/m pornography, rendered in watercolor. it is nothing more 'extreme' than you might find in any off-the-rack adult magazine. the fetishists and sex workers were, as they always are, the canaries in the coal mine, and in absence of patreon providing any real explanation as to why they have spontaneously frozen this account i seriously believe the noose is about to tighten further on all adult content, not just the kink.
not trying to be an alarmist or a doomer, but if you have a patreon you should be setting up some type of mailing list to keep in contact with your supporters, today. if your account ends up being targeted, it will be magnitudes harder to reorganize on a new platform without some way to inform subscribers what happened and where they can find you.
finally, if you are so inclined, i highly recommend pledging to dove as he attempts to rebuild on subscribestar. his art seriously kicks ass and he is just the latest in a long string of artists i deeply care about who have been casualties of patreon's dogshit staff shooting itself in the foot to please payment processors.
