LOS ANGELES — Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter announced Tuesday that it has reversed its recent decision to impose new “Mature Content” rules banning projects that involve adult content and sextech.
As XBIZ reported last week, numerous adult projects have previously found backing via Kickstarter, but the new rules banned projects “created for sexual pleasure” and sexual wellness products that are “explicitly designed for sexual stimulation through insertion or penetration, or are intended to have body parts inserted into them.”
The site’s “Mature Content” warning has now reverted to its previous phrasing: “Kickstarter is committed to providing a space for creative expression. We do not allow pornographic or illegal content.”
In a post titled “An Apology: Rethinking Our Mature Content Guidelines,” COO Sean Leow writes, “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 ... We’re going back to the drawing board, and yes, that means we’re going back to our previous rules.”
Leow further explains that the updates were primarily driven by requirements from Kickstarter’s payments processor, Stripe:
“Over the past several months, we’ve seen a growing number of campaigns that had already been approved by Kickstarter get suspended by Stripe mid-funding. When that happens, it’s devastating. A creator’s project can be frozen with funds in limbo, sometimes weeks into a campaign they’ve spent months, or even years, building.
Whenever that happened, we advocated for those creators directly with Stripe, and in some cases, we were able to get mid-campaign enforcement reversed so creators could finish their campaigns. We fought those battles because we believe in the work and because creators deserve to see their campaigns through.
We recognized, though, that enforcement against Kickstarter-approved campaigns would continue, and that meant there could be more cases where our advocacy for creators wouldn’t result in the reversal of a suspension.
Faced with the realization that creators would continue getting caught in the gap between our rules and Stripe’s, we thought that the best path forward was to close the gap, giving creators one set of rules to work within, versus having to navigate two different policy philosophies.
That was the intent, but the decision we made was an abandonment of the core counterculture, f*ck the establishment spirit of Kickstarter, and it left our community vulnerable.”
“The decision we made wasn’t the right one, and in an attempt to create rules that could work across both Kickstarter and Stripe, we rolled out something that was too restrictive and too far removed from what we actually believe,” Leow’s post continues.
He cautions users that Stripe can still suspend a campaign that Kickstarter has approved.
“That’s the reality of operating within a payment system we don’t fully control,” writes Leow. “When that happens, we will advocate for you as we have been, and we’ll do our best to help you understand what adjustments you need to make to your project to make it supportable by Stripe, but we can’t guarantee the outcome.”
The post includes a link to a page titled “Navigating Stripe Mature Content Reviews,” which addresses Stripe’s policies and includes a link to its guidelines.
“We could have done this better,” Leow’s post concludes. “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.”
