RunawayDanish

I really undersold the importance of MasterCard's shift in policy. I've not even had a chance to set up my laptop yet and since leaving Tucson to travel to Canada the situation has continued to escalate. To give you an idea of the problem, Visa and MasterCard are internationally speaking nearly absolute-authorities for bank funds interacting with E-Commerce platforms of any kind. If Visa banned all erotic and adult work from being paid for, no one would have any source of retaliation. The ACLU allegedly has been contacted to start looking at a case against MasterCard but we're talking about a Civil Suite that I doubt will get far. I don't think the ACLU could make a case here as in US Law circles it's a matter of private business. Internationally speaking, it's a matter of international law that the UN supported the minimization of payment processor options as part of anti-laundering operations.

The laws that handle this are why Crypto Exchanges are a failure, investigators can use the token data available on your typical Crypto Blockchain to identify end-users in transactions that attempt to cash out, making it poor for privacy. This also is why in the U.S. you can really only get pre-paid Visa's in Walmart (and some other stores, like Walgreens or Target) to use on Paypal as an alternative to having a bank account. Even then, Paypal may require you to have a bank account anyway if you want to take cash out of the account and it could just as easily deny you any payment if there's no identifiable information such as a phone # or other significant ID element. The Internet has gradually become entangled in the progressive and pervasive creep of making everyone [Named Persons], which adds accountability and liability to you in exchange for literally nothing but the privilege to do business. Anonymity has been dead, but this is sort of a final and chilling set of nails being hammered into the coffin.

*Note: I'm having a hard time finding some old articles I think my desktop at home has saved as bookmarks. Here is a 2010 FATF report that you might find relevant, it predates the policy changes that effectively secured Visa and MasterCard's Duopoly status (people will also note American Express is in the market, I wouldn't give that much debunk power given the state of affairs).

Ignore the warning signs at your own peril.

Here's my buddy's running list of porn-friendly and unfriendly payment processors and hosting websites.

Edit: Helpful or adjacently relevant citations included as Hyperlinks, click on underlined text to see the citation for yourself. Turns out searching the internet in Canada is a little bit wonky, I can barely find useful information :/

I'm on my phone so I don't have the link handy. I'm not sure I understand their math on having 6 whole months when they didn't have six whole weeks, and are self reporting a continued deficit. I wanted to signal boost my bud Qwaxi-Lixard who has a "do/don't support adult artwork payments" list I'll link later when I update this post, likely tomorrow.

Co-host staff want to operate a pay platform, in fact Co-host isn't supposed to be the their principal product, so that means asking hard questions. Questions that require lawyers. Questions that require time. Questions that require thoroughness and familiarity with Policy, Law, and Industry. Co-host staff has not impressed in these domains, and frankly I'm not going to get overly comfortable and will proceed with attempting to orchestrate more archival options.

Gumroad also stopped supporting any adult or explicit content being sold on their platform today. Mr. Stark I don't feel so good.

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.

DECENTRALIZE YOUR ONLINE ALIAS TODAY!

NOWHERE IS BY US, NOWHERE IS FOR US.

Reminder I'm a NSFW blog, this is probably SFW content. I'm less confident that even saying the words "Adult Only Content" is kosher now more than ever lol.

Initial rumblings are suggesting that the newest set of NSFW guidelines on Patreon.com will effectively ban multiple categories of furry porn (click here to read it), but as you might imagine if you read for yourself you might find your favorite artist effected.

As written in my last post (which is shared above) Patreon seems to be gently trimming the fat as they set up for something that might look like a total purge of pornography from the platform. It's unclear if this will become the case right now, but signs are pointing to it. Let's quickly clarify something: NSFW and Pornography are not interchangeable labels, what Patreon is doing is specifically targeting Adult Content / Pornography. The big change today is that Patreon seems to be bending to match MasterCard's policy because they have literally no say in the matter, and we knew this type of Financial Deplatforming by the big establishment payment industry was likely to happen, Visa and MasterCard change roles on who is the bad cop pretty consistently.

Some loose observations below the break, nothing down there is as important as what's been said, just food for thought.

PS: They drop ABDL by name with precision in this update, extreme deliberation was taken to ensure that their stance is emphasized, there's a few errata added that make it sound like they're being reasonable but I wouldn't hold my breath here.

[Update 2]: I forgot about the Feederism Purge, there's more discussion to be had about specific motivations and how it relates to fictional depictions in the context of pornography, not dissimilar to ABDL. A purge of fiction is a purge of fiction, it gets noted. Citation to follow when I have one handy.

[Update 4]: Considering the tragic change in room temperature about Cohost's Future being a likely shuttering or sell-off come April, I'm starting to think for real we queers are in hot water. How long can you boil a frog, exactly?