Q4 2025 policy updates, now finalized with your input

Patreon's Creator Policy Engagement Program (CPEP) exists to ensure that the people most impacted by our policies have early visibility into proposed changes and a direct line to the Policy Team before anything is finalized.

In December, as part of CPEP, we shared a set of proposed updates to Patreon’s Community Guidelines focused on Teen Safety, Adult/18+ Works, Harassment, as well as a refreshed introduction. Today, we’re closing the loop.

After gathering feedback through our December 2025 Patreon Connect livestream, Discord Q&A, and direct emails, those updates are now finalized and live in our Community Guidelines. Thank you to everyone who participated — your input meaningfully shaped the final result.

A refreshed introduction section

Creators supported a small update to the Community Guidelines introduction that better reflects what Patreon is today. This was not a shift in philosophy or principles; the values behind our guidelines (human rights, free expression, and privacy) remain unchanged.

The updated introduction now describes Patreon as “a network where creators and fans mutually invest in creative culture.” We also explain that the Community Guidelines “set the foundation for the works and behaviors we permit on Patreon.”

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Strengthening Teen Safety protections

The Patreon community inherently skews toward adult audiences and does not resemble the mainstream, social media environments that children commonly frequent; it is not likely to appeal to children. We nevertheless take teen safety extremely seriously, and so we have made several updates to the Teen Safety section to provide greater clarity and because creators expressed strong support for clearer guardrails in this area.

We added more specificity to our rule prohibiting adults from presenting themselves as minors in sexualized contexts. The updated guidelines now include examples such as: “stating or implying that you are a minor,” “digitally altering your face or body to appear like a minor,” and “roleplay where you pretend to be a minor.” We also made clear that if a creator page features sexualized imagery of real adults (like imagery featuring nudity or sexual activity), it cannot also include any imagery of real minors.

For animated or illustrated Adult/18+ works, the guidelines now state that subjects must be unmistakably interpreted to be adults and not minors. Informed by creator requests for more detail, we outlined some of the factors Patreon considers in that evaluation, including “Physical development and physical features of the subject,” “Context provided with the imagery (e.g. title, description, tags, etc.),” and “Material objects or settings traditionally associated with specific minor age ranges (e.g. school settings, bottles/rattles, cribs, etc.).”

These additions ensure the guidelines reflect evolving creative tools while maintaining clear, safety-forward standards.

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Expanding protections against image-based abuse

We finalized updates to the Harassment section of our Community Guidelines to expand and strengthen our definition of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII).

The updated guidelines now spell out that NCII includes “sexualized imagery reproduced or distributed without the subject’s consent, even if the imagery was originally taken with the subject’s consent.” We also added clearer language addressing “‘synthetic’ non-consensual intimate imagery,” including digitally generated or manipulated content such as AI-generated imagery and deepfakes that make it appear that someone participated in a sexual situation that did not occur.

The revised section further covers sexualized imagery taken without a person’s knowledge (for example, “creepshots,” “upskirting,” or hidden camera recordings), threats to create or share intimate imagery as blackmail (“sextortion”), and tools or services designed to produce this type of material, such as so-called “nudifier” or “undressing” apps.

As before, creators may discuss or raise awareness about NCII for educational or advocacy purposes — but may not share the imagery itself. We also added a link to our partner StopNCII.org, which helps individuals create secure hashes of their images to prevent further distribution across platforms.

These updates reinforce our existing zero-tolerance stance on intimate image abuse and align our guidelines with evolving safety standards.

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Clarifying expectations for Adult/18+ Works

The updates to the Adult/18+ section were shaped directly by conversations with creators. In the months leading up to December, we hosted roundtables where Adult/18+ creators told us that some expectations felt vague, inconsistently applied, or unclear across different parts of their Patreon page. We also received thoughtful feedback during our December 2025 livestream, in Patreon's creator community Discord, and by email. That input directly informed the changes now reflected in the Community Guidelines.

• We renamed the section to “Adult/18+ Works” (from “Sexually Gratifying Works”) to better reflect the scope of content it covers and align with terminology creators already use.
• We reorganized the section to make clearer what is permitted where, distinguishing what is not allowed anywhere on Patreon, what is limited to pages categorized as Adult/18+, and what may appear on both Adult/18+ and All Audiences pages. This structure now applies across key areas, including sexual activity and nudity, as well as topics like incest and bestiality, where creators asked for clearer, more precise definitions.
• To address one of the most common areas of confusion, we further emphasized that works featuring nudity, sexual activity, or sexually explicit imagery must remain behind the Patreon paywall and accessible only to paying members. Public-facing areas (including profile images, banners, tier descriptions, previews, and posts available to free members) must not include that material.
• Under the Adult/18+ section on artificial intelligence, we added a definition of “synthetic” non-consensual intimate imagery, which is not permitted on Patreon. This includes AI-generated imagery or deepfakes that “make it appear that a real person was in a sexual situation that did not really occur.”
• We also added clearer examples of what is permitted on Patreon generally, including mature or suggestive discussions as part of a broader narrative, sexual education content without depictions of sexual activity, and non-explicit intimate activity that does not involve nudity.

Across these updates, the goal is clarity, consistency, and predictability, not restriction. We hope these refinements deliver the clearer, more specific guidance Adult/18+ creators asked for.

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Gratitude and looking ahead

Thank you to everyone who joined our Patreon Connect livestream, shared questions in our creator community Discord, or emailed us directly. Your feedback helps shape clearer, stronger policies through the Creator Policy Engagement Program.

In the coming weeks, we’ll publish Patreon’s third annual Transparency Report, offering insight into how we enforce our guidelines and how our approach continues to evolve.

If you have ongoing feedback, you can always reach us at CreatorPolicy@Patreon.com.