- Edited
Recently, Webnovel has been censoring Patreon links.
I first noticed this in one of my favorite stories: Chrysalis. At the end of each chapter he places promotional links in the author comment section. Now, if it were simply all links in general I could be more understanding, but the discord link he posts is fine, while the Patreon link alone is censored. WTF!?
TBH, I don't care what their reasoning is, it's just plain stupid.
It's like they don't want authors to find any other means to support themselves other than contracting with them. And if that's the attitude they have, then why even allow the existence of fan fiction on this site?
Obviously, fan fiction can't be contracted for copyright reasons, so the ONLY way for them to get support is through some form of monetization like Patreon. Luckily links that were posted a long time ago (and presumably, this applies to every synopsis as well), have not been affected.
I agree with some commentators, that it seriously isn't smart for Webnovel / Qidian to make decisions without clear communication and without consulting the community first. I'm 120% sure that they consulted approximately ZERO authors when they came to this decision.
While I doubt authors that aren't contracted will leave the platform just because of this, they will without a doubt prefer platforms like Royalroad and ScribbleHub that actively encourage such monetization - they have paypal / donate buttons baked into their platforms.
Those same authors will find workarounds, for example: shortened urls. Google has a free service you use can to do this; for those interested: https://goo.gl/
I would love to be proven wrong about this and will happily eat my words if this policy changes (or turns out to be a programming mistake or some kind of error).