⚠️Here is What Will Happen⚠️

Here is what will happen

Sorry to have kept you waiting. This write-up wasn’t very fun to do and I had to condense a lot of stuff to make this easier to read and keep out my own biases.

So I attended the aforementioned live stream on Tuesday 30th August 2022.  I was waiting for a publication summarising events but since that’s missing-in-action, I’ll have to do it myself.

Please note that this only affects Content Creators.  If you are a Patron simply pledging towards a Content Creator, you need not worry, you are unaffected.

In short:

They didn’t answer a question about how retroactive this policy was, or whether it would apply to highly transformative media. However, it seemed like this wouldn’t necessarily apply to voice-actors… a lot was implied to be published in the upcoming revised Guidelines.

The Documentation they mentioned is here, and whilst Patreon itself doesn’t require this, they advise Content Creators to have this to hand to insure against any legal complications.

A good question was asked:

Therefore, this is the timeline of upcoming events:

It was said that Patreon will directly contact Content Creators by email and having a reminder on the site on itself, so nobody is caught unawares.  This will occur over the coming weeks.  Upon recieving contact, there will be a grace period of two months, and these are the options Content Creators have within that time:

This means that payments will be unaffected and continue as normal.  However, come late November, early December, Patreon said it will have to freeze accounts that do not comply.  The aim is for this whole verification thing done by 2023, at the very latest April-June time.  There wasn't much said yet about the nature of the process itself beyond the following:

So I imagine when the time comes, they'll detail what to do and how it'll happen.  The organisation doing this is here, but the livestream hosts were quick to say that Patreon itself will not hold the data, nor will pass on any personal information onto Mastercard: simply that the documentation was verified as valid and the Content Creator itself is compliant.  The process only has to be done once, and Patreon will delete the data; the verification company apparently holds the data for seven years but uses some form of encryption and is very secure: tech-related stuff I didn't understand involving Direct Token A.P.I Calls or something.

There was a very brief Q&A session but all I could garner was:

That said, an interesting point was raised about that dreaded pop-up window which appears if you try to post something in text that is… unapproved, per se.  Content Creators will know what is, and this is one of the reasons why I’m so evasive with giving things their proper names.  It turns out that it was initially designed to hint towards Creators about certain terms and phrases that have come up in the past during infraction investigations.  It doesn’t automatically flag an account (which I thought was the case) but it is a warning to be mindful— that’s why I’m not exactly forthcoming with amorous talk and stuff on here. Sorry to be a Sam No-Fun; self-preservation and all that.

On a similar vein…

But I will inform you all duly when I know more about what is happening and when.

What am I going to do?

For the present, pause my Patreon to focus on commissions.  Some would argue that now would be the best time to keep calm and carry on as normal on this platform.  If I were a totally sensible person, unrealistically immune from any and every piece of external negative influence, I’d do that.

But I’m not; doing commissions helps me regain some sense of control in a world that increasingly feels chaotic and random.  If in between commissions, I’m able to produce some form of content, I’ll do so, but I can’t guarantee it.  Hence me pausing this month; it’s unfair to charge for no product.

Realistically speaking, it looks like I’ll have little choice but to toe the line, so when my summons comes later in the month (most likely), I’ll comply.

I’ve been thinking about my options and some are just unworkable outright due to my location, others would mean I’m stuck only producing certain content over and over again and to be honest, that’d be my definition of the Ninth Circle.  Some can revel doing that, and full props to them for doing so; no judgement, no criticism here.  All I’m saying is it is not right for me.

Plus, I’ve spent a lot of time and effort building up this platform, and given how insofar, I’m one of a handful actively cataloguing and keeping a close watch on all this stuff, I don’t want to leap before I look, per se.

I’m sorry for the unhappy start to September but at least you know. If you know of any other Content Creators who should know about this, let them know too.  Last thing any of us want is a sudden vanishing…

And yeah, that’s about it.

Thank you for your time and support on here. Really appreciate it.

Yours Sincerely,

‘Kamidu.