Patreon Transparency Report 2025
March 24, 2025
Patreon is a creator-first platform that protects artistic freedom while ensuring a safe, transparent, and thriving community. Unlike platforms that claim neutrality while letting bad actors take over, we enforce common-sense rules that foster creativity and meaningful engagement. We actively moderate to keep Patreon free from harassment, extremism, and disruptive noise, so creators can focus on what matters most—expressing themselves freely, building their audience, and growing their businesses.
To uphold this commitment, we publish an annual Transparency Report, providing a data-driven look at how we enforce policies, handle legal requests, and maintain platform integrity. Our second annual report covers Trust & Safety and policy enforcement efforts from January 1 to December 31, 2024, offering a clear, numbers-driven view of how we cultivate a safe and thriving environment where creative communities can flourish.
Read our inaugural report, published in March 2024, here.
Policy enforcement
Ensuring Patreon remains a safe and creator-first platform requires a balanced approach to content moderation. The Trust & Safety team enforces Patreon’s Community Guidelines by reviewing reports, proactively identifying violations, and applying proportionate enforcement measures. This section outlines how potential violations are identified, how enforcement actions are applied, and how Patreon ensures fairness in moderation decisions. This commitment to transparent moderation reflects our ongoing effort to balance platform integrity with creator trust.
How we identify potential violations
Patreon’s Trust & Safety team works diligently to review and enforce our Community Guidelines. Potential policy violations reach the Trust & Safety team through channels such as:
- Moderators on Patreon’s Trust & Safety team, who proactively review works.
- User reports submitted by creators, fans, or external stakeholders.
- Automated detection systems that flag potential violations.
Types of enforcement actions
When violations are identified, Patreon’s moderators apply enforcement actions based on factors such as the severity and frequency of the violation, ensuring a measured and creator-first approach rather than a broad-stroke response; we understand the importance of keeping our platform safe and protecting creators’ businesses. Enforcement decisions follow established frameworks while allowing for case-by-case assessments to ensure fairness and consistency. Additionally, creators have up to six months to appeal all enforcement decisions.
There are three levels of enforcement:
- Content-level enforcement actions occur when a specific work or interaction—such as a post, comment, chat message, collection, or product listing—contains a low-severity violation of Patreon’s guidelines that does not warrant full account suspension or removal. In most cases, the Trust & Safety team takes an action that hides the violative content until moderation feedback is addressed. Creators are then notified and given the opportunity to edit or remove the content, or appeal the enforcement action.
- Account suspensions are temporary restrictions placed on accounts with repeated or more serious violations.
- Account removals result in permanent account termination due to severe breaches of our policies.
Enforcement totals and reporting methodology
In 2024, the team reviewed 71,022 unique Patreon pages for potential guideline violations, up from 38,324 in the previous year. The increase in page reviews is due primarily to moderation across several new community products and features. The following enforcement actions were taken:
- 6,232 unique content-level enforcement actions.
- 673 unique account suspensions.
- 1,708 unique account removals.
Note: These totals reflect distinct enforcement actions and are not the direct sum of the columns in the table below. When an account or piece of content is reported under multiple policy categories (e.g., one report for “Harassment” and another for “Inauthentic Behavior”), any resulting enforcement action is logged under both policy categories. To ensure accuracy, each enforcement action is counted only once in the total figures.
Enforcement actions by policy area
The following table depicts the outcome of our moderation efforts by policy area. These metrics reflect Patreon’s ongoing commitment to maintaining platform safety, with particular focus on high-risk areas such as Teen Safety and Sexually Gratifying Works, where proactive detection drives a significant portion of enforcement volume.
Note: Patreon’s 2024 Transparency Report (covering January 1–December 31, 2023) provided enforcement data by policy vertical but did not break down enforcement actions by type. The 2025 report (covering January 1–December 31, 2024) introduces that additional level of detail.
Policy vertical | User reports reviewed by T&S | Content-level enforcement actions | Account suspensions | Account removals |
---|---|---|---|---|
Dangerous Organizations | 2,729 | 26 | 0 | 8 |
Harassment | 2,750 | 46 | 13 | 62 |
Harmful Acts | 445 | 25 | 2 | 3 |
Hate Speech | 4,836 | 827 | 1 | 7 |
Illegal or Regulated Activities | 2,288 | 43 | 31 | 20 |
Inauthentic Behavior | 1,560 | 21 | 5 | 4 |
Teen Safety | 21,543 | 213 | 415 | 1,328 |
Sexually Gratifying Works | 33,935 | 5,102 | 300 | 599 |
Violent & Graphic Works | 928 | 10 | 13 | 14 |
Copyright, privacy & government requests
Copyright infringement notifications
In 2024, Patreon processed 1,047 notifications of claimed copyright infringement, a decrease from 1,804 in 2023.
Data & privacy
Patreon remains committed to providing users control over their data. In 2024, the team processed 22,133 data subject access requests (DSARs), up from 13,055 in 2023.
For more details about privacy at Patreon, feel free to reach out to us at [email protected]. We also encourage you to explore our Privacy Policy to learn more about how we collect, use, and share personal data.
Government & law enforcement requests
Patreon carefully reviews and responds to government & law-enforcement requests in accordance with applicable laws.
- Compliance rate:
- In 2024, Patreon received 17 requests for information from U.S.-based agencies and complied with 100% of these requests, which were reviewed and deemed to meet legal criteria triggering compliance. By comparison, only 50% of the U.S.-based requests directed to Patreon in 2023 (14 of 28) met legal criteria to trigger a response.
- Patreon received no valid requests from non-U.S. based agencies in 2024.
- Government content takedown requests: Patreon received one content-takedown request in 2024, which came from a non-U.S. agency and lacked legal authority to trigger a response.
- Breakdown by country: The only international content takedown request in 2024 came from Malaysia. In 2023, Patreon received 14 international requests, which came from Germany, Spain, and Denmark.