Comic Creators Are Hot, Bothered with Kickstarter New Mature Content Policy, but Should They?
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Kickstarter has updated its rules on the types of mature content that comic creators (or anyone) can post to fundraise using the social platform. The new update is causing worry and anger for some comic creators who rely on the platform to fund their comics.
Prior to this update the only rule regarding prohibited fundraising for NSFW content was “pornographic material.” Last fall, Kickstarter launched a newsletter called “Kickstarter After Dark” to highlight “bold, provocative, and proudly not safe for work” which included comics and graphic novels. The new rules now ban work created for sexual pleasure, distributes porn, sexual services, promotes abusive content/language, explicit sexual violence, illegal content, child porn, sexual acts involving insertion, and dating apps. Rules that are being argued as vague are sex acts, nudity, implied nudity. It does allow for romance and “spicy” content, intimate acts that are not explicitly sex acts, and non-sexualized nudity.
Mike Wolfer, who has a long career in comic books and has funded 40 projects on Kickstarter, has posted an open letter to Kickstarter, as well as a reaction post to an email he received from Kickstarter. He notes that Kickstarter is shifting some of the blame to the payment processor Stripe. Part of their response includes:
Stripe will conduct its own review and may decide that it’s unable to support your project. This can happen before your project launches, while it’s live, or even after it successfully.
Stripe’s rules state that you cannot use their platform for “illegal activities or for the businesses or product types” which includes adult content and services involving “pornography and other mature audience content (including literature, imagery, and other media) designed for the purpose of sexual gratification.”
Payment processors like Stripe, Mastercard, and Visa, have increasingly come under pressure by politicians and pro-censorship groups to take censor material they cannot censor via legislation due to free speech rights in the US. According to Electronic Frontier Foundation this tactic, “financial censorship“, has been used against Steam and Itch.io to remove legal adult content in the US.
Brad Guigar, who has hosted eight fundraisers on Kickstarter, four of which were for his spicy Evil Inc After Dark comic, argues that the Kickstarter statement, especially the PDF of their guidelines, is being misinterpreted by comic creators. In a The Webcomics Handbook Substack post (paywall with 7-day free sub), Brad writes that the new rules could be seen as a how-to guide to setting up a NSFW campaign that won’t get flagged. He maintains that Kickstarter doesn’t mind NSFW content, but needs the cover of this policy as a way of demonstrating it’s doing something. But if comic creators read the policy and guidance carefully…
To me — and I could be wrong — this could be Kickstarter giving adult-content creators the clarification they’ve been wanting on setting up a project page that doesn’t get flagged. They’re literally saying: “Hey… here’s how we want you to set up your project page to stay under the radar.”
Those rules don’t refer to the content of your comic. Rather, those guidelines are aimed at keeping your project from getting flagged. In fact that bottom section — “Common Use Case to Flag” — seems to spell that out rather clearly.
They go even further in explaining — in detail — the words they want you to use on your project page to avoid being flagged!
Time will tell whether Kickstarter is taking a strong stance against NSFW content or covering its “gluteal cleft (buttocks).”
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