The brand new 12 months is already properly underway, however we needed to take a fast second to highlight a few of the huge strides we made on Group Tips, moderation, and advocacy in 2022. Learn on to find out how your suggestions helped us form our most up-to-date coverage updates and initiatives.
What’s CPEP?
These updates are a part of our Creator Coverage Engagement Program (CPEP), which we launched in 2021 to offer creators a voice in constructing inclusive and clear insurance policies. Every quarter, we suggest coverage updates and provides creators an opportunity to weigh in by means of coverage livestreams, Discord discussions, particular person workplace hours, and electronic mail. That suggestions informs which insurance policies get finalized and what they’ll seem like.
New coverage implementation: Violent and Graphic Content material
We at all times intention to create a secure setting for all creators and patrons. That’s why we proposed including a piece to our Group Tips on “Violent and Graphic Content material” clarifying the place we draw the road relating to content material that depicts or glorifies real-world violence and struggling. Creators supported this proposal, and we’ve now added new language to our Group Tips:
“Patreon won’t permit content material that promotes violence that’s graphic, gratuitous, sadistic, or glorifies real-world struggling. Moreover, content material that depicts violent or graphic imagery, reminiscent of animal abuse, decapitation, gore, and violent loss of life, won’t be permitted.”
We additionally acknowledge that depictions of this content material may be essential in sure non-gratuitous contexts, and creator enter helped us make clear what these exceptions ought to seem like. Our creator neighborhood urged us to emphasise that works containing fictional violent and graphic content material are permissible on the platform. We included that clarification within the language, noting that the creator ought to simply give the viewers a press release or context to tell viewers that the content material is dramatized.
Key coverage developments in 2022
The “Violent and Graphic Content material” coverage is only one instance of how creator suggestions enriched the insurance policies we developed in 2022. Listed below are a number of extra:
- We clarified the sorts of content material that qualify as hate speech and sorts of harmful organizations that aren’t permitted to earn cash on Patreon.
- We launched a extra creator-first content material moderation method that may scale back situations of single moderation actions leading to full web page suspensions. This can assist creators really feel extra knowledgeable and higher protected on Patreon.
- We supplied extra element for Grownup/18+ creators the method of age verification, which is a requirement from fee processing companions to make sure that these creators are over 18. To afford creators as many sources on the subject as potential, we revealed a variety of Assist Heart articles:
We liked participating with you on these insurance policies throughout our quarterly livestreams. For a complete look into final 12 months’s coverage updates, try livestream recordings from Q1, Q2, Q3, and This fall.
The Creator Advocacy Initiative
Patreon has lengthy been an advocate for creators in governmental, authorized, and regulatory areas. Final 12 months, we expanded CPEP to incorporate what we name the Creator Advocacy Initiative, to share the advocacy work we do on behalf of the creator financial system and inventive small companies. We joined dozens of firms in public coverage advocacy to:
- Help a United States invoice designed to cease main tech firms from “preferencing” their very own merchandise on their on-line marketplaces (as a result of huge firms shouldn’t be gatekeepers to the creator financial system).
- Denounce a directive in opposition to well being care entry for transgender kids and their households by Governor Abbott of Texas, United States. (Extra particulars right here.)
- Warning in opposition to proposed United States laws which was meant to guard shoppers from unsafe merchandise, however in follow would saddle digital service companies with burdensome compliance necessities that will “restrict artistic expression.”
What else did we rise up to final 12 months? We submitted proof to the Home of Lords Communications and Digital Committee to advocate for the membership mannequin as a transparent driver of development within the creator financial system, and we despatched the British Parliament a letter concerning the draft On-line Security Invoice, which might influence hundreds of tech firms. Additionally, the Coverage staff’s personal Courtney Duffy hosted a South by Southwest panel in Austin, Texas on how leaders within the personal, public, and authorities sectors can construct enduring insurance policies to advertise the creator financial system.
What’s subsequent?
We’re already onerous at work to construct upon final 12 months’s progress. Preserve an eye fixed out for brand new coverage proposals to assist make Patreon the very best place for creators in 2023. Within the meantime, you may at all times attain the Coverage staff by emailing us at CreatorPolicy@Patreon.com. Thanks creators to your continued help and partnership.
