thebibliosphere:

Gentle reminder, that this is no coincidence that this is all happening in the wake of
FOSTA and SESTA, which were set up to sound like positive things (because who wouldn’t want to stop sex trafficking?), but in actual fact were designed to make it harder for sex workers to work safely and with advocacy.

The fact that this happened in the wake of several scandals involving government officials, is also not a coincidence.

These bills that were framed so carefully with the narrative of concern, were nothing but a smokescreen for mass censorship. And we’re starting to see the ramifications of it. And to everyone that said “who cares I’m an Artiste not a sex worker, it doesn’t affect me”, Wrong.

This shit affects everyone, it just starts out with the most vulnerable and works its way up.

thebibliosphere:

First of all, oh my gosh that post about people feeling betrayed by Ko-fi and how their business model is going to fail.

Listen, all Ko-fi ever was, was a wrapper for paypal. It let you use an anon name so you didn’t have to give out your details the way paypal requires you to (i.e. paypal.me requires you to use your real name and location, unless you have a business account). That’s it, that’s all it was, a nice use friendly skin for processing paypal transactions, and it said as much in their terms and conditions. Lots of vague “we adhere to” etc etc.

They didn’t betray their user base, they just never outright stated what those terms were because they operated on the assumption that you knew what paypal’s conditions were. They even linked to them. Their business model is doing exactly hat it was intended to do, and they’ll continue to make bank doing it.

What is new is them having to state it outright, likely because they were about to get hit with a whole lotta trouble on their end because their site was non-compliant with paypal/stripe terms and conidtions. And the sudden switch from Patreon to Ko-fi afterr Patreon started purging accounts at the start of July, likely brought it to light.

So no. I’m not surprised by Ko-fi having to do this. I knew what Paypal’s terms and conditions were (and so should you if it’s your main source of income), I knew what I was signing up for. What I did not anticipate was “if you even link to something Adult themed, we’ll wipe your account”. That sucks. Not even Patreon does that. (Yet.)

And the thing is, the problem isn’t Patreon and Ko-fi. It’s PayPal and Stripe having a near monopoly on how online transactions are handled, a monopoly that allows them to enable this kind of content censorship, and effectively hold creative platforms to ransom. Either you make money and comply, or you don’t. Sink or swim, and good luck with those concrete boots, kid.

So by all means be mad at Ko-fi. I am. But I’m not mad that they’re having to enforce their terms and conditions I already knew about (and you could absolutely argue they should have been up front about those sooner, their T&C page was deplorably vague and relied on you knowing what PayPal’s T&C were, which I mean, still, you should, but it was still a dick move.) I’m mad at the extreme lengths they are going to to enforce them, out of fear of PayPal and Stripe. I can’t even link to my tumblr anymore on there because the content, though often not, could be deemed NSFW.

So what do we do about it? I honestly don’t know. Make some fucking noise I guess. Push back against things like
FOSTA and SESTA

when they come around. Listen to sex workers when they tell us this shit is going to be harmful and maybe not roll your eyes because what you’re doing is art not porn, like art is never censored or destroyed in the name of censorship.

And second of all while I’m at it, @ everyone in those comments and my inbox making derisive comments about “sex workers ruining creative platforms for the rest of us”, first of all, excuse the entire fuck out of you, and second of all, That’s👏 Not 👏What 👏Is 👏Happening👏 Here
👏

And
👏

You
👏

Know
👏

It.

Do not flip this around and blame sex workers. It’s not their fault this is happening. This is the result of a conservative society wanting to restrict and regulate content, pure and simple. It just so happens that by and large the people doing this regard sex workers as content to be used and silenced at their whim, and not people. Do not enforce this lie.

Evil begins when you treat people like things. Do not.

You not being able to create your artistic erotica is just part of a long line of abuse starting very low down the chain. You’ve only just been made aware of it cause it’s finally affecting you.

And what you don’t want to do right now, is punch down. You want to be aiming up. Cause kids, that’s how things change.

And no I don’t have a solution to this, I wish to heck I did. But I’m sure we can come up with something together. And that’s the keyword there in case you missed it. Together.