Nothing in particular I think it was payment processers deciding to crack down on porn and content that can be seen as "groomer" like. The rules probably were set in years earlier but back when it was cancelling trump supporters and right wingers it was fine. They demand patreon create these obtuse and dumb rules to cater to their sensitivities.
The worst of it set in during Obama's term, but the root of it can be traced all the way back to the patriot act and subsequent laws, which required payment processors to create a system to share lists of "undesirables", who could then have their assets frozen and be cut off from the financial system. It was originally intended to be used against terrorists, but once the payment processors - particularly MasterCard - got a taste of their new policing powers, they went all in. MasterCard curates a list called MATCH and uses its dominant market position to force other payment processors to also abide by it. Any time you hear about someone being suddenly debanked or losing access to financial services like paypal, or any time you hear about an intermediary like patreon or paypal implementing new, harsh rules against niche topics or speech, or whenever an internet service abruptly cuts off people or organisations for being too "offensive" it's almost certainly MasterCard lurking behind the scenes, with a threat to cut off their ability to process payments.
They used terrorists and muh nutsees to establish the precedent that they can cut people off for arbitrary reasons, with little transparency. These same powers were used against Null and KF, which is why we're in the current situation. Now they're engaging in moral crusades to sanitise and homogenise the internet into a corporate- and advertiser-friendly blob, which only allows material that is "safe" for their personal preferences.
The only amusing part is that they are now coming for the people who originally cheered them on; it's only amusing because they were warned, repeatedly, that this would happen but they were so caught up in their self-righteous demands to silence everyone they deemed to be "nazi", which was nearly everyone who didn't kowtow to the troon and the techbro, that they didn't care. They were convinced that they were the vanguards of the new, glorious world of freedom from the icky white male. They're now in the part of the revolution where it starts eating its own children.
tl;dr MasterCard use powers granted by the US government, intended to definance terrorists, to persecute and destroy everyone who threatens the hegemony of corporate interests on the internet.
