Naked or not naked? — Patreon’s approach to nudity and adult content

June 21, 2021

Helping our creators express themselves


Our mission is to give creators the freedom to make whatever they want, however they want – adult creators included. In order to empower this creativity while fostering a safe and welcoming environment for our community, we have to limit certain content that’s publicly available (meaning visible to non-patrons) on creator pages. 

What do we mean by publicly available?

There are areas of your creator page that are visible to everyone, whether or not they’re a patron. Things like your banner, profile picture, tier benefits, and public posts are always visible to anyone who’s viewing your Patreon.

What content are you allowed to have publicly available?

We know that your Patreon is your business, and you need to be able to attract an audience to make it a sustainable one. The public areas of your page are where you can explain to patrons what you’re creating, promote your tier benefits, and give your fans previews of your content.

We encourage you to use these spaces to promote your work, but we also have to keep in mind that members of Patreon’s community can be as young as 13 years old, and that we have a responsibility to ensure our younger users have a safe browsing experience.

Content that is adult in nature, such as explicit nudity and heavily suggestive sexual expression, should exclusively be featured in patron-only posts.

What do we consider nudity?

Each platform has their own policies and expectations surrounding nudity, which can generate a lot of confusion for creators. That’s why it’s important to clearly share our definition of nudity here at Patreon. Explicit nudity, whether in real or illustrated images, is solely allowed in patron-only posts. Some examples of what we consider explicit nudity are:
• Full-frontal nudity, male or female.
• Back-facing nudity where buttocks are fully visible.
• Partial nudity where nipples or genitalia are visible.

Policies are constantly evolving

It’s important to point out that as society and culture evolve, so must our policies in order to stay fair and current. Our Trust and Safety team strives to treat our creators and their livelihoods with the dignity and respect they deserve, and we always aim to be fair in our decisions. You can find out more about how we create policies and how we moderate content by checking out the other articles in our blog series. You can also take a look at our Community Guidelines here.

Have questions? Wanna chat? Want another pair of eyes on your content to make sure it’s within guidelines? Reach out to us at guidelines@patreon.com. We’d love to help out.