ConQ
patreon
Important News: Uncertain Future for ConQ
🕑 Added 2023-06-19 17:45:36 +0000 UTCI'm sorry, this will be a long text, but I don't know how to shorten the whole issue any further. But it's very relevant for those who supported me and still do, so you should know what's going on.
The Issue:
As some of you might have heard, Patreon recently made some changes regarding 18+ creators like me. Which leads to some weird issues I cannot really comprehend. But one thing after another...
The main change is that 18+ creators are being forced now to identify themselves under the pretext of fraud prevention, if I understand it correctly. If creators don't comply, they might lose their opportunity to gain support and money through Patreon.
Generally, I don't see the issue with the whole process. When it comes to making money through the internet, some sort of identification is oftenly required, which I know from other platforms where I sell my 3D models for example.
The problem is the way Patreon wants to enforce that rule. They offer a service through Jumio. For the identification to take place, Jumio wants the creator to make a photo of his ID (both sides) and a selfie and store that information in an unknown location (probably in the US)...
The one or another EU citizen and many others will already see the issue here. Making copies of the ID, that's a highly sensitive issue and only a few companies are allowed to do so and when they do, only under strict conditions and certainly only for validation purposes - Meaning such copies cannot be stored and must be deleted immediately when the process was finished... With Jumio that's not the case as I could read in their FAQ.
In theory even this wouldn't be such a big deal, as sensitive information can always be covered up or be black barred away - Which I did in several other platforms and I never encountered any major issues, as it is a legitime right of a citizen of the EU to prevent identity theft or data abuse for example... So of course I did that again for the Jumio process. I covered all the unnecessary information, as Patreon writes in it's FAQ regarding this topic, that they only need to see the photo on the ID, the birth date and the full name, just to confirm my identity. So all other information was covered up and yet the Jumio identification process always failed for me. I couldn't understand why.
I tried to finish the process already 10 times and it always failed for an unknown reason. This whole odyssey took way too much time already (which is claimed to take only 3-5 minutes... Which is a joke. I spent hours with that issue already) and obviously I tried to contact the Patreon support on several occasions... Sadly the Patreon support barely reacts and the reaction time is about a week (7 days) on average so far
Finally today I got another answer from another person of the Patreon support, which explained to me that my identification attempts seem to have failed, because I "censored" my ID on my photos - Basically I put snippets of paper on parts of my ID that are not relevant for the confirmation process. So that was apparantly the reason the process failed - A procedure which is the right of every EU citizen (I repeat again).
Meanwhile all the demanded information was visible (photo, name, birthdate) and yet it is claimed I "censored" my document. Which I did. I censored the irrelevant information. So what's the deal here? You can still see all the relevant stuff!
You might wonder what this all have to do with you and why I share this with you. Because, to break it down, I don't know where this whole thing will lead me regarding my Patreon page. I don't know if this might even force me to close my Patreon page in the near or far future, in the worst case.
I simply can't see the issue and cannot understand why Jumio tries to violate EU laws. Because of that matter, I had to read myself into the topic and that's clearly how it looks like - Jumio seem to try to violate EU data protection laws.
It's just super weird. Especially since I know for certain, that other 18+ Patreon creators who had to go through the same process, did the exact same thing as me and had absolutely no issues in the validation process. So this whole thing doesn't make much sense to me. I don't know how else I could say it. This seems highly arbitrary.
So yeah. As a result this whole process leads to a high level of uncertainty to me. I don't know what will happen. I don't know when something happens, if anything at all. But as soon as it looks like Patreon might restrain (your) payments from me, I might be forced to close my Patreon page until this problem can be resolved, if it can be resolved at all - Even though I don't see what needs to be resolved in the first place.
I'm already investigating possible options for the case I have to give up Patreon, which I hope will not be necessary. I just wanted to inform you, that I'm facing some highly artificial, unnecessary issues here, which might have unforseen consequences for my Patreon Page and future here. I tried to explain the Patreon support the issue several times and they mentioned theoretical alternatives for the validation process, but so far I have not seen any other realistic options.
Welp. If I should learn something new, I will try to keep you up to date. Let's hope for the best.
If you have any thoughts about that and maybe even think I'm overreacting - Let me know your point of view in the comments or on the discord.
