Howdy everyone. Please share this. I don't care how, I don't care to whom, but you need to listen and you need to send this around.
Patreon has been mobilizing on a lot. 3D Face Scanning technology requirements, increasing scrutiny on content published, purges of various NSFW kink artwork through the years, but this last chapter in Patreon as a Queer-enabling Platform is likely to close with a hell of a bang.
Allegedly, Patreon will be going Public very soon. For those not aware, going Public means the company is going to offer Shares to Investors via the Stock Market. An Initial Public Offering (IPO) is a big deal for a tech company like Patreon, which follows the model of many Silicon Valley start-ups of blitzscaling and then retroactively changing the rules of business with their non-worker clientele. Articles from Summer of this year suggest that the company may be going Public during 2024, or perhaps right at the end of 2023. The company isn't doing so hot based on projected valuation, this might be the moment they have to go full hog.
Read on for more details. SFW content, NSFW blog, just as a heads up.
Similar to UBER or LYFT, Patreon is part of the semi-formal economy, it is not Employment, it is a Payment Platform for a specific service, and its key customers are not actually those receiving services, those customers are actually the people working on behalf of Patreon as Content Creators. Due to this, there is no such thing as Collective Action for Creators except to start up somewhere else. With E-Commerce strictly regulated, there are sparingly few options as one of my pals has compiled.
[Edit]: Forgot to mention this important feature. Based on my gathered information and the trend at large, it appears that a NSFW content Purge will be hitting Patreon soon, I'd guess no later than Q2 2024 if they plan to land an IPO. I believe the Fiscal Year for 2024 is about midway through its run in March, so that's my approximation for IPO to land. I especially recommend you look at the graph about its valuation linked above in the introduction. Below are a list of compiled news stories or personal reports of varying types. Patreon notoriously does not document many of their purges... and I couldn't really find anyone dedicated to documenting them either, not easily.
If you know of someone with comprehensive knowledge of Patreon's NSFW bans, let me know so I can link to them.
[Edit 2]: Bullet Points added to the fistful of links for ease of knowing what links to what.
[EDIT 3]: HOLY SHIT YA'LL I JUST REALIZED ITAKU.EE HAS A NOT INSUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT OF FUNDING THROUGH PATREON. OH MY FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK (corrected, assume other sites funding via Patreon may also be in trouble just in general if their content is a bit odd or niche)
[Edit 4]: I appear to have bad memory (surprise), it seems that if I am remembering anything Cohost flavor about a Patreon, it's in the past or not as relevant as I have a bad memory, and must be thinking of Itaku.ee in particular. Corrections in the comments seem to confirm Cohost is funded by Subs via Stripe, and the mysterious Benefactor
[Edit 5]: I have added a citation from 404media.co covering the ABDL purge which was published today December 7th, 2023.
[Edit 6]: I've included the factsheet provided by Tracxn.com about Patreon, which features data mostly from 2021. This isn't too surprising, since Patreon is still a private company, its relevant analytics won't be updated too often. Also a non-Itaku website about football that two years ago swapped to Patreon as their funding platform.
Patreon's Recent NSFW related History:
- In 2022, Patreon's Pre-IPO valuation took a nosedive.
- This Summer, coverage of the Patreon IPO 'entering the pipeline' seems to have all updated around mid June.
- My coverage of Patreon dramatically mishandling payment processor coordination in August.
- I was Required to submit to 3D Face Scanning to authorize pay-outs, I closed my account instead in late August.
- My brief coverage last week of how ABDL content was totally purged from Patreon.
- Last week via Reddit: broadly speaking, many different NSFW content bans all at once.
- Posted recently to Cohost NSFW artists finding themselves dismissed from Patreon without warning.
- Tumblr post that got me to look into IPO related news.
- Here's the platform's most recent blog, which does not discuss in detail anything above except the face scan stuff.
- 404media.co's in depth article covering the ABDL purge from Patreon.
- Tracxn.com's factsheet about Patreon's company related metrics for investors.
- Mayo GAA Blog, which has a podcast about football, funds through Patreon as another example of a website dependent upon the platform.
