Kickstarter Walks Back Adult Content Ban After Fierce Pushback

Just one week after implementing rules banning almost any conceivable form of adult content on their platform, Kickstarter has reversed their restrictive policies and have once again allowed adult content creators to use their platform. This reversal comes as other states, countries and online agencies are cracking down and censoring content that can be deemed “sexually explicit”. While this may seem common sense to some, the creators taking these bans on the chin are fed up.

Last month, Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website, updated its guidelines for “mature content” projects using Kickstarter’s services. Previously, the website had only banned pornography or generally illegal content. In May, that list grew to include “projects created specifically for sexual gratification”, “sexual services or hookup platforms” and “insertable sexual products”. In an effort to state their reasoning for expanding these rules, Chief Operating Officer Sean Leow blamed the company’s payment processor, Stripe. “The updates to the rules were primarily driven by requirements from our payments processor, Stripe. Stripe operates under its own legal and compliance requirements separate from Kickstarter’s own rules.” Leow went on to say that the global financial institutions that control how companies like Stripe operate make it difficult for adult content creators to get their money “without friction”. 

But, who is one of the main payment processors for OnlyFans? Stripe. So, while Leow may claim that Stripe was the driving force behind these changes, they’ve clearly made exceptions for far more “NSFW” websites. Either way, Leow says, “We botched it. The rules didn’t land the way we intended, and the response from our community let us know loud and clear that we got it wrong. The decision we made was an abandonment of the core counterculture, f*ck the establishment spirit of Kickstarter, and it left our community vulnerable.” 

Adult creators have been taking these bans - even the temporary ones - on the chin for a while now. UK creator Lily Phillips has had her Instagram account banned for seemingly no reason at all. “We’re really being discriminated against,” Phillips said of the adult content creator community. She added, “All my content is always in the guidelines. I really don’t even show my ass cheeks or anything like that. I’m pretty strict.” Phillips relies on Instagram to get the word out to her millions of followers about her OnlyFans account, her main cash cow. While Instagram itself doesn’t allow direct links to adult websites, creators have found workarounds that work, most of the time. Leaving the word “OnlyFans” anywhere on an Instagram account triggers automatic flagging, but using “landing page” style sites like Linktree or Beacons to facilitate user traffic off of Instagram aren’t technically disallowed. 

Even financially, before the rise of OnlyFans, so-called “morality clauses” gave banks the right to refuse to carry money made from porn or other industries where public opinion was split. These clauses are still in play today in every controversial-ish industry from cannabis to crypto, leaving thousands of employees and businesses in the lurch with money they aren’t allowed to deposit.  

Regardless, adult content creators have been dealing with all kinds of hurdles from the stigma surrounding their work to the financial community’s lack of acceptance. In this particular instance, public dissent was resounding enough to get a big company to change its ways, which is an encouraging sign as more companies implement restrictive guidelines disproportionately impacting adult content creators. Things are slowly returning to normal at Kickstarter, though the adult community certainly hasn’t forgotten the site’s recent blunder. In his remarks, COO Sean Leow said, “We could have done this better. We’re going to keep working to earn back your trust, and we’ll keep creating the space that bold, boundary-pushing creative work deserves.”