2022 Patreon Child Material Allegations

Overview

2022 Patreon Child Material Allegations or Patreon Child Adult Material Scandal refers to accusations that the website Patreon was aware of graphic content featuring minors that was hosted on its website between the late 2010s and early 2020s, with some alleging that it attempted to dismiss or cover up the controversy at the same time Patreon fired a large amount of its security team in September 2022. Though a statement was put out by Patreon's official blog addressing the issue as backlash spread online in late 2022, some accused the site of being aware of the controversial material earlier due to prior communication between the company and certain minor-oriented Patreon pages discussed amid the scandal.

Background

On February 16th, 2022, TikToker Mom.Uncharted^[1] uploaded a video in which she talked about an Instagram account that purportedly featured photo content of what she called a child that was dressed scantily and in provocative poses, with several links directing the viewer to either a Telegram channel or Patreon where more pictures were available for purchase. This TikToker did not mention the account by name, showing only brief, censored images of it, receiving over 25,000 likes in seven months as they tried to spread awareness of the account (shown below).

As an update in the comments, mom.uncharted^[2] said that Patreon did reach out to her and confirmed that the account in question is being handled by someone over the age of 18, purportedly making everything legitimate. This comment was posted on February 23rd, 2022, and a follow-up video by mom.uncharted on March 22nd in which she details Patreon claiming to take the page down while it was still active then received over 3,000 likes in eight months (shown below).

On May 8th, 2022, the TikTok account TizzyEnt^[3] uploaded a video in which he also went into detail on multiple different accounts that appeared to be engaged in the process of allegedly selling sexually suggestive pictures of minors to members of a Patreon, with the Patreon page existing for the sole purpose of selling these pictures. His findings in the TikTok gained over 67,000 likes in four months, prompting Patreon to respond to a follow-up video he then posted on September 12th that received over 43,000 likes and 900 comments in a week (shown below).^[14]

Developments

Patreon Blog Response to Allegations

On September 13th, 2022, Patreon then published a blog^[4] to its site, titled "False Allegations on Social Media," that gave further details into the scandal, saying that the Glassdoor review that was reportedly left by an ex-employee accusing the site of multiple child sexual abuse material cover-ups was fabricated and that social media posts about the company ever hosting that content were misinformation and that it routinely checks to make sure everything is and appears to be over the age of 18.

The same day it was published, the Patreon blog post was addressed in another video by TikToker TizzyEnt^[5] in which he discussed their response, receiving over 5,800 likes and 80 comments in six days (shown below).

Lilyrose08 Patreon Account

There were two accounts that were showcased by TikToker TizzyEnt in his different videos on the topic between May and September 2022, and following the heightened awareness on social media of the controversy in mid-September, Vice^[6] then investigated both of them through the lens of the information and the blog post by Patreon. According to Vice, the first account (which was later identified as LilyRose08) had photosets for sale featuring "what appeared to be a young girl in swimsuits and in various poses, whose content was labeled as 18+." The article also noted that Patreon requires documentation from 18-and-up creators on its platform that the account holder and anyone pictured in the content is over the age of 18. According to Vice, Patreon removed the Lilyrose08 account during the summer of 2022 for "repeatedly violating its rule against sexualizing children." An excerpt from the Vice and Motherboard article stated:

Motherboard’s reporting found that content creator was banned across multiple social media platforms, including Instagram and YouTube. Age play is a genre of porn in which consenting adults pretend to be ages they aren’t--often referring to roleplaying as a young child, or infantilizing oneself or one’s sexual partners. Many porn sites, including OnlyFans, don’t allow users to upload age play content or pretend to be children, even if they’re adult roleplaying as underage. Moderating age play content is often too risky for platforms to even attempt to allow; keeping minors off platforms is of utmost importance to any legitimate adult website.

Despite the statements of blocking age-play content from being on different platforms, a cursory search for DDLG (dom daddy little girl) or many other age-play-related terms brings up multiple accounts on Instagram,^[7] Patreon^[8] and YouTube^[9] with varying degrees of sexuality and roleplay being present on each site.

While it was noted that the LilyRose08 account was removed over the summer of 2022 from Reddit^[10] (/r/Lilyrose08 subreddit) and YouTube,^[11] one account featuring her still exists on Instagram,^[12] while several others have been removed over the past year. However, archived copies of these and other problematic profiles can still be accessed, and showcase what the TikTokers were talking about in videos from 2022 while trying to raise awareness.

On August 5th, 2021, the LilyRose08 subreddit, Patreon and Twitter account first went online. Immediately, the account began posting pictures of LilyRose08, with Twitter^[13] outright marking their first video posts as sensitive material with a content warning on top of it while LilyRose08 also started to post censored collage pictures to their social pages and informing their fans to buy the sets over on Patreon, while also explicitly stating that "Instagram has been very strict" with their sexual content posting (shown below).

A post was made on the Patreon account on February 26th, 2022, which was related to LilyRose08's "Photoset 29" that was posted on Patreon days prior, stating, "Patreon has made contact and told us that it's not allowed to post this type of content," also urging the Patrons to "save the photoset before it was removed."

This announcement closely followed the TikTok^[2] posted by Uncharted.Mom after she originally raised issue over the controversy. Her Tiktok was posted on February 16th, and the follow-up comment about Patreon looking at the LilyRose08 account and manually verifying it was posted on February 23rd, 2022 (shown below). The timeline appears to show that Uncharted.Mom signal boosted the LilyRose08 account and scrutinized it, was then told it was manually verified on the 23rd, and the LilyRose08 account confirmed that Patreon had contacted them about their content being not allowed, but still continued to let them post and warn others to download the pictures before they would be removed.

LilyRose08's age is a primary focal point of the controversy as it relates to both Patreon, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube's removal or allowance of her accounts for sexual conduct. According to multiple comments and users in forums discussing her alleged age, many stated seeing birthday posts from her when she turned 12, purportedly being 13 years old for the majority of her photos, and finally turning 14 near the beginning of 2022, with "LilyRose08" allegedly short for "LilyRose2008" (example comments shown below discussing her age).

As stated in a forum post (example above), a modeling session involving LilyRose08 exists in which she has brunette hair and appears underage in photos that were taken around 2019, purportedly placing her at 11 years of age. These photos were uploaded to the site Indexxx and show images or poses of the same girl from LilyRose08 posts that match the timeline established in various comments across the web,^[15][16] allegedly putting her at roughly 13 to 14 during the time of the Patreon posts that were subsequently noticed by Patreon that warranted a response from the company but allowed to stay up for an indefinite amount of time. Additional posts were also allowed to be made before being removed from the platform following further TikTok videos being made in mid-to-late 2022.

Search Interest

External References