Last week, we looked at Kickstarter’s new content guidelines, which had some strange new additions, including a ban on “sexual wellness products that are not designed for insertion or penetration and are not marketed primarily for sexual gratification.” Those rules have now been removed and the company has reinstated the old version of its guidelines.
The updates to the rules were primarily driven by the requirements of our payment processor, Stripe. Stripe operates under its own legal and compliance requirements separate from Kickstarter’s own rules. And even Stripe’s rules are dictated by a larger system shaped by financial institutions that control how money moves globally.
Kickstarter says it has seen an “increasing number of campaigns” that it approved but then “were suspended by Stripe mid-funding.” The company also says it “directly advocates for those creators with Stripe,” because “we believe in the work and because creators deserve to see their campaigns run.”
After the new rules were released a week ago, we immediately asked Kickstarter for comment, reached out to get a response, and haven’t received a full response until today — when the company pointed us to its public post. We asked how the company defined the difference between “sexual well-being” and “sexual satisfaction,” and when I pressed Kickstarter today to address our original question after the rules were rescinded, this is what we got from KS director Nikki Kriya:
Given that we have reverted to our previous guidelines, the specific rule you are referring to is no longer in effect. I don’t want to analyze the language from the guidelines we have already followed. The blog post reflects our current situation and is the most accurate representation of where we stand.
“Mature” content has been strictly regulated by payment processors for years, so it’s no surprise that Kickstarter was forced to comply. In fact, it Is Stripe says that businesses cannot sell “sexually explicit content” designed for the purpose of “sexual gratification”. Kickstarter’s blog post points to those rules as a clarification of its own now-revoked rules and insists that the recent update does not represent its values — which also include “fucking up the founding spirit of Kickstarter.” (But perhaps the establishment is still so strong that it’s hard to say the word “fuck” without being censored.)
Kickstarter says its community told it “loud and clear” that the new rules were wrong and it’s “going back to the drawing board.” It also said it was “continuing to push for flexibility, clarity, and stability at Stripe.” We will have to wait and see whether a platform that has helped creators fund billions of dollars can stand up to those taking money away. Meanwhile, creators on the platform may still have trouble with Stripe’s rules, even if Kickstarter stands against them.
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