Patreon has been involved in controversy recently, banning beautiful and charismatic Right-wing journalist Lauren Southern. The payment platform justified its actions with the following words, “It appears that you are currently raising funds in order to take part in activities that are likely to cause loss of life”. Southern had made videos portraying a group called “Defend Europe” positively. The group operates boats in the Mediterranean and says it seeks to save lives by preventing human trafficking. Opponents say they seek to sink refugee ships but no arrests have been made.
Know what else endangers life? Child rape. Laws against paedophilia vary between jurisdictions – paedophile photographs are illegal pretty much everywhere, but pure text stories such as the infamous book, “Lolita” are general not illegal. Laws on cartoons vary from country to country.
The public pages of the Patreon user “waysin” contain a number of legal and heavily censored cartoons of young boys, but the page is pretty clear – if users pay for the content the digital figleaves will be removed and they will be getting pictures of boys in the 5-10 year age range being bestially raped by tentacles. Furthermore, and critically, “waysin” says he knows that the material behind the paywall (which your author did not view) is illegal in Taiwan where he lives.
Patreon knowingly assists users in distributing sexual material related to children that is illegal in the jurisdiction of the user. MHN was told about this account by a whistle blower. The account was drawn to the attention of Patreon and Jack Conte personally, but not removed. Click for full size.
It is important to fully scrutinise this. Because of the abhorrent nature of child sexual exploitation, many companies have rules that any material, legal or not that sexualises children is forbidden. Patreon has a policy to that effect. Yet, when I drew this specific account to their attention, Patreon failed to take action.
Patreon Community Guidelines state that any material that sexualises children is forbidden. When I drew the ‘waysin’ account to their attention they did not enforce the rule. Click for full size.
Patreon also claims to forbid breaking the law, or encouraging others to do so –
Patreon rules require users not to break the law nor encourage others to do so. Waysin says in writing that he is breaking the law, but when I drew this to Patreon’s attention, the account was allowed to remain. Click for full size.
Know what else endangers life? Putting people in cages, then carving them up with great big knives and eating them. Yep! Cannibalism fetish is a thing on Patreon! The company claims to forbid pages that glorify rape or sexual violence regardless of whether those pages are legal. One user, via the account, “exposedpiggies” operates a femdom (pay-to-be-doxed) service and advertises their other page, “goddesslana”. The latter account provides erotic material she describes as follows –
Patreon rules clearly forbid material that in anyway glorifies sexual violence. This page is about femdom cannibalism (women literally cutting up and eating men) and is illustrated with bloodstained knives and so forth. I drew the account holder to the attention of Patreon, but no action was taken. Click for full size.
Naked men and women with really large bloodstained butcher’s cleavers is an unusual fetish by any standards, and certainly not quite my cup of tea. Without being judgemental (and why not be judgemental?) this clearly breaches Patreon terms.
An example of some of the totally non-violent imagery on Patreon. For satirical purposes, I have added Jack Conte’s face and a speech bubble. Pictures used pursuant to license (Jack Conte’s face) and also the parody exception under s30A Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Click for full size.
Regardless of whether any real cannibalism took place and regardless of whether the user waysin’s, “content” is legal or illegal in any particular jurisdiction, the purpose is clear: sexual arousal and gratification over photographs of human beings being cut up and eaten and also over cartoons of young boys being raped by non-human life-forms. Masturbation over knife crime, exploitation, cannibalism, bestiality and paedophilia. That is what Patreon is allowing the user, “waysin” to distribute on its platform. The account has been operational for over a year.
The Patreon user Waysin has captured some images from his rape cartoons, taken crops limited to the child’s expression (that is removing the tentacles, sphincters and so on) and sells them as badges. Click for full size.
When seeking to justify the removal of Lauren Southern form his platform, Conte invented a new buzzphrase, “manifest observable behaviour”. If we assess Conte and Patreon’s behaviour by their own yardstick, what conclusion would we reach?
By letter of 8th August 2017 I informed Jack Conte personally about these specific pages as well as the Patreon press team. I use legal, off-the-shelf software to monitor whether my emails are read. According to the monitoring software I use, my email was read at least 36 times by the press team and also by Jack personally.
A read confirmation report. Jack Conte personally read the email I sent him, yet no action was taken. Therefore Jack bears moral responsibility for the paedophile and other filth distributed by Patreon. Click for full size.
The observed behaviour was that Patreon and Conte were told about the paedophilia, cannabilism, rape and other material. They read and considered the information. They took no action. The conclusion I draw based on the manifest observed behaviour is that Conte and Patreon are willing to profit financially from “patrons” masturbating over child bestiality rape material.
A read confirmation report. The copy of my letter sent to the Patreon press email address was read at least 38 times over a period of days, yet no reply was received by the deadline and no action was taken. Patreon bears moral responsibility for the material being published. Click for full size.
It is interesting to note that an account related to the image board 8chan was banned from Patreon, ostensibly for the same type of material the user “waysin” is distributing. The only different appears to be the political leanings of the users. “Waysin” seems apolitical whilst 8chan is often associated with Conservatism and the alt-Right.
Patreon were quite specific in the notice they sent to the then owner of 8chan, Frederick Brennan and the full text is still available online here (archive here). Amongst other things, Patreon said this –
“Other violations include […] facilitating the promotion and/or encouragement of pedophilia practices. While we are aware that illustrated child exploitation imagery is not illegal in the United States, we take a strict stance, regardless of the law, on the usage of Patreon to fund or facilitate its distribution.”
Clearly, this unequivocal stance has not been followed consistently when the alleged “pedophilia practices” are carried on by non-right wingers.
This is Jack Conte, the CEO of Patreon and half of musical duo Pomplamoose. He knowingly profits from the distribution of paedophile bestiality fetish material, as well as sexual material related to cannibalism. Image released under CC BY-SA 2.0 for commercial use. Image by Joe Loong on Flickr. License linked here. A private archive was taken of the page to prove the irrevocable license release as of this date. Click for full size.
Other materials I drew to the attention of Patreon included interracial, male rape material. No action was taken. I put the following questions to Patreon –
Q – What action will Patreon take to deal with the paedophiles and other questionable individuals identified?
No apparent action was taken and no reply was received.
Q – What policies will Patreon put in place to prevent its platform being used for the distribution of ‘erotic’ materials, illegal or otherwise, regarding child rape and exploitation?
No apparent action was taken and no reply was received. Existing policies were not enforced.
Q – Why did it not have effective policies in place already?
No apparent action was taken and no reply was received. Whilst policies exist, they were not enforced.
Q – Given the unimaginable depravity exposed, will Mr Conte resign?
No reply was received.
Q – Does cannibalism (for example cooking and eating a person) amount to an activity that may endanger life in accordance with Patreon rules?
No reply was received.
Q – What measures does Patreon have in place to mitigate the risk of users acting out the depraved fantasies they enjoy via the website?
No reply was received.
A second chance was given to Patreon – a complete draft of this article was sent to Conte, Patreon and Southern for comment on 12th August 2017 for further comment. Conte and Patreon were warned that UK law requires libel claimants to mitigate their losses (Mawdsley v Guardian Newspapers Ltd [2002] EWHC 1780 (QB)).
They were warned that they were given the opportunity to take action and respond on the facts and therefore to prevent publication of any incorrect statements. They were warned that if they failed to dispute any material fact prior to publication, then they would have failed to mitigate their losses 100%. Finally, I offered to delay publication if Patreon or Jack Conte wanted extra time to take legal advice or instruct counsel. Nonetheless, no response was received.
Jack Conte, via his interest in Patreon, has profited from the distribution of paedophile child fetish material. Matthew Hopkins News says that Conte and Patreon should be publicly shamed and shunned by all decent people. MHN readers are invited to petition Patreon to politely express dismay and request removal of sexually deviant material in accordance with the site’s own policy. Readers can email jack@patreon.com and press@patreon.com. Please keep correspondence polite, respectful and legal.
Readers may wish to draw these matters to the attention of customers and business partners of Mr Conte’s band, Pomplamoose. I am willing to post details of any boycotts or demonstrations.
I just posted on Reddit in the abuse survivors forum. I just wanted to thank you and endorse everything you are doing. Please take a look at what I said: https://redd.it/6txckj.
The callous way these companies fail to act against abuse sickens me. I want everyone in the music and finance industries to know about Jack Conte and the vile things he allows.
I would like to get a petition together of child abuse victims to Visa, Mastercard and PayPal and every company Conte works with asking them to drop him and Patreon.
Vordrak, I have a couple of questions.
1. there are some leaks of conversations with one of your supporters and Josh on cow. Do you know if they are real?
2. What do you think of Josh’s new Monero mining scheme? (Check out the mining pit thread on his supporting the forum page)
1. The supporter is real, and they had a real conversation. Whether Josh was telling the truth is anyone’s guess.
2. I own an IT company and a while back I looked into BitCoin mining but it is not a realistic solution long term. Monero is simply a more advanced form of the same underlying structure, with better anonymisation and management. The problem with all proof-of-work blockchain based cryptocurrencies is that in order to control block progression rates, there is a difficulty value. The work of mining is artificially made more difficult based on the number of miners. Monero is spiking at the moment so difficulty is going up.
Put in real terms, if at the moment KF makes $1 for 8 hours work, then every time the difficulty goes up that number will reduce. There is an article explaining how the process worked with BitCoin here – https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/profitability/. BitCoin mining was very profitable at first, but fell in profitability as the number of miners and difficulty value increased.
Ironically, the browser based miner model for Monero is sufficiently popular it is actually causing a difficulty spike.
The Waysin page has been removed, but point me just 1 people prejudiced by that page. You removed the source of income of a very talented artist (I don’t know him, but to get 79 patrons, he is talented of course).
You said pedophilia, but that page is doing things with drawings! There isn’t real people there, it’s only drawings! Where are the victims?
The only victims in this case are the 79 patrons who paid for that content and the artist. He lives in Taiwan (a poor country) and this was probably his only source of income, and it’s over now.
You are evil, hiding behind a moralism you haven’t, go find something to do instead of destroying things.
Waysin deserved what he got. I do hope Patreon has learned its lesson from the article.
Hahaha this guy sounds like an outright pedophile the way he’s defending it. Take a good hard look in the mirror and let us know what you see you sick fuck.
Indeed. This “Richard” guy is basically defending monetisation of unimaginable depravity. He also writes similarly to “Waysin” the owner of the now removed tentacle rape page.
Like!! Thank you for publishing this awesome article.