Announcing PrivatePatrons

Editors Note: This article was originally written in October 2017, however, was never published at the time. The publication of this article is to provide history and context, and isn’t entirely representative of PrivatePatrons today.

Last night, I announced a new project I’ve been working on at Unobvious Technology, called PrivatePatrons. Some initial details were published on twitter, and this article aims to consolidate and expand upon them. The goal:

Empower sex workers by providing a public profile through which they can advertise their online presence, gain followers & fans, and earn money.

There’s a few similar products/services out there that have a similar or overlapping purpose, the include Patreon, OnlyFans, IWantEmpire’s IWantFanclub, and to some extent, Twitter. However, all of these have issues, making them less than ideal, for instance:

• Patreon this past week has, to much controversy, quietly changed their terms of service to ambiguously prohibit the use of their platform by sex-workers, in particularly, indie porn producers.
• OnlyFans doesn’t openly publish who is behind the company and doesn’t openly specify their payment processor. Research by Sex Workers Everywhere, found them to be operated by a man with a questionable (at best) reputation. He had a number of past ventures, including being involved in a similar product, Follow+, that went bust, leaving sex workers short-changed. This also resulted in the outing of a number of sex workers when confidential information (real names, SSNs, etc) was published or used as blackmail material. (This was documented by the founder of Follow+ on twitter)
• Twitter is presently ambiguous as to whether it supports sex workers, but is generally leaning towards not supporting them, and even shadow banning them.

That leaves IWantEmpire’s IWantFanclub, which is yet to be launched, and details at present are incredibly sparse. That said, they are something of an industry leader, and I expect great things from them.

What is PrivatePatrons?

As a sex worker, it’s routine for you to use a large number of services for advertising, sales, distribution, and promotion. Whether it’s advertising on ScarletBlue, or sales through a clip store such as IndieBill or IWantClips, or promotion through Twitter or Instagram, sex workers have a large online presence. It’s not uncommon, however, for these services to prevent you from linking to your external profile (for example, Streamate and Niteflirt). So, instead your promotional channels become the access point to connect your online presence together.

We aim to address this by providing you with a clean profile with a list of links to the services you use. This feature will be ready in our first beta and public release. Your profile may look something like the following (note: this is subject to change and just an early design)

Minimum Viable Product

Launching early December, the minimum viable product (i.e., the first public release) will feature signup for sex-workers, and enable them to build profiles like the above. It’s deliberately simple.

By the end of year, we’ll open up accounts to all users, allowing you to become a follower of sex workers who interest you.

Having an account, profile page, and following profiles will always be free.

Post Launch Roadmap

In the first quarter of 2018, we’ll be launching Verified Profiles: these are profiles where we can verify ownership & authenticity. Verification will be free, but will require you to submit a photo of your passport along with other information to prove you are who you say you are. This data will be strictly confidential and controlled, and is required for future features.

Following this, we’ll be implementing monetised features. Unfortunately for our first release, we can’t accept payments, this is primarily due to funding constraints: we require money to cover business registration fees, legal costs, and payment processor membership (which is €500 just to accept payments), just to name a few expenses.

By the end of March 2018, we’re intending to have some monetized features launched. These may include paid messaging, tributes/donations, and subscription-only content for fans.

If there’s a way we can help you make money as a sex worker, we intend to help you. Let’s make this tweet from Sex Workers Everywhere a reality:

Register your interest

To register your interest fill out this form, and we’ll let you know when we launch and future updates.

Press Information

PrivatePatrons is a platform to consolidate your identity as a sex worker into a single profile: one place to find where to buy your clips, contact you, see your photo galleries, etc.

Unobvious Technology is empowering sex workers and advancing the adult industry through innovative, modern, and secure technology. Founded by Emelia Smith, a transgender woman with 10+ years experience as a software engineer. You can find her on twitter at @MistressEmelia or @ThisIsMissEm

Prior Interviews:

• Radical Transparency and Unobvious Technology , YNot Cam, November 2017— https://www.ynotcam.com/2017/11/06/mistress-emelias-unobvious-technology/