Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

functionmouse

VISA is the government

schnebbau

So who is pressuring the processors?

jacknews

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws."

bobro

I feel like if you’re going to write an article like this, you should at least engage with why it’s happening. Maybe deep down for some of the participants it’s a kind of moral thing, but mostly this is because payments for NSFW/porn stuff are dramatically more expensive. All of the “stuff” payment processors are doing is harder for NSFW/porn content, so that’s the main reason the processors want these companies to separate/cutoff that type of content. EDIT: I’m kind of sensitive to getting downvotes on a comment. Do the downvoters think this is a high quality article giving a good amount of context for the upstream policy choices? Do the downvoters take me for supporting some kind of decision like this? Do you think I’m just wrong on my understanding of why these policies are made? I’d really encourage you to look into it. Google or chat something like “why do payment processors ban adult content”.

amiga386

Question: what prevents an organisation like Kickstarter from using more than one payment processor, including the ones used by actual porn companies?

Aspos

There should be a national payment processing operator as an alternative to VISA/MC. Just like they do it in many other countries.

lofaszvanitt

You shall not receive money in "easy" ways.

codedokode

Why payment processors do it? Why people in America do not want to earn more money from commissions? Strong church lobby? Legal risks? I think its mostly religious groups who who are against adult content and sex, or there are other groups? Also this is why we should work to increase circulation of cryptocurrency. No stupid religious restrictions and stupid political sanctions. Also why PornHub and OnlyFans are immune to religious lobby?

Aurornis

Headline is misleading on multiple levels. Kickstarter already banned pornographic content before this. They expanded the rules to include more specifics. That's it. That's the story. Everything else is speculation and anger-mongering. > While the previous version of the page simply prohibited “Pornographic content,” it now contains some oddly specific restrictions, including, but not limited to, “implied sex acts,” “MILF/DILF” content, “implied nudity,” and anything featuring “female nipples/areolas, genitalia,” and “anuses.” Good heavens, they’ve even banned “buttocks.” The article quotes some speculation from some other blog that is trying to link this to Elon Musk and Peter Thiel for maximum anger points: > Why? According to a report by The Daily Cartoonist, Kickstarter may be under pressure from its payment processor, Stripe, which Palantir Chairman Peter Thiel and X proprietor Elon Musk partially own. Kickstarter and Stripe did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However Stripe actually does service adult content sites. It just falls into a category of high-risk merchants that also includes travel sites, cryptocurrency, gambling, tobacco, and other categories where the chargeback rates are statistically much higher. They will service those sites, but you might have higher fees to compensate for the higher chargeback rates that come with those categories Source https://stripe.com/ie/resources/more/high-risk-merchant-acco...

behringer

Kickstarter should allow ACH transfer and checks for such projects. @#$% the man.

schoen

My friend Rainey Reitman's new book about this phenomenon came out last month: https://raineyreitman.com/2024/06/11/transaction-denied-my-u...

cromulent

The FT podcast series “Hot Money” season one explained a lot about this. Basically the payment card industry shapes what adult content is produced by governing the money flow. https://www.ft.com/hot-money

surgical_fire

I despise crypto and its shills, but damn if this is not some excellent use case for cryptocurrency. Circumventing payment processors bending the knee to puritanical pressure is why God must have created bitcoin.

brnaftr361

It feels like there's been a significant cinching of personal rights recently. I wonder if it has anything to do with crypto's relatively recent adoption by institutional movers. NordVPN offers crypto payments, I expect virtually every other operator would too. Seems like a good way to get adoption rolling. Tunnel to somewhere that providers will service without an ID check and stay more anonymous by the dint of the crypto exchange. Maybe I'm trippin.

laweijfmvo

This is the least of my concerns with Kickstarter. It’s so trivial to completely scam an entirely fake campaign, with zero repercussions, that no one should take this site seriously at all. I say this as someone who has backed a campaign that posted updates and even claimed that shipments were out while all the comments were the same: I received nothing.

turlockmike

FOSTA-SESTA is the source of this. A well intentioned bill, that, once again, has unintended consequences beyond it's original intention. Mastercard/Visa/Banks don't want legal liability.

Havoc

Similar parallels to trying to force dns provides to police piracy

IFC_LLC

As a person who has been working in payment processing for the past 5 years, I can definitely say: a total norm. I'm impressed they allowed that in the first place. The adult category is a very touchy one. When one get's an OK to connect to the credit card network he has to go a very arduous procedure of being approved by a CC provider. Because the worst thing that can happen from a viewpoint of a payment provider is a return. At the exact moment when someone asks for a return on a credit card, the provider is the one who is responsible and has to revert the transaction instantly. (That's why Banks are sooooo lengthy and pushy about you filing those claims. They don't want you to initiate the return.) Now, if you sell weed, do gambling, sell crypto, do porn or anything else of that sort, you have to pay extra for your card processing, to offset all potential problems for the payment provider. Problems? What problems? Well, a LOT of transactions for adult content and toys happen on stolen cards. And those cards are not stolen per say. It's just a kid taking parent's CC card, or your SO is using it without your knowledge. Once found, this results in a lot of scandals and quarreling. Followed by a return request. And those returns are very annoying to that. The service "technically" was delivered. But now you are loosing it. And the payments provider does not want to be hit by that. In fact, this is not a news in the first place. When Kickstarter sign their agreement with the card provider, they specifically stated categories of services they will be responsible for. And I guess porn was not one of them. So what? Now the provider saw a chargeback because of the adult content and did the most standard thing: Went back to the documents, noted the fact that Kickstarter not suppose to be doing adult content, and went back to Kickstarter to tell them to stop. I handle 2-3 of such cases per month. It's called routine. But now, enter the world of entertainment. A quick search shows one that Kotaku is a subsidiary of a larger conglamerate G/O Media (Gizmodo - Onion). A private equity company that bought out a bunch of entertainment websites like Gizmodo, Lifehacker and Kotaku. It started in 2019, and went basically bankrupt by 2023. They have been selling their websites to different holdings. In 2025 Kotaku was sold to a Swiss conclamerate that put it into a line of similar useless media resources. And if you check the author - you'll find out that he is a well-established gaming reporter. With little knowledge of the money business. And then this article makes it to HN.

hitekker

The left-right coalition against porn makes relief for Kickstarter or Stripe unlikely. FOSTA-SESTA, the law that increased liability for platforms facilitating porn, passed 388-25 in the House and 97-2 in the Senate back in 2018. Every senate Progressive except one voted yes, including Sanders, Warren, Kamala Harris (AG against Backpage), Booker, etc. Anti-trafficking feminist groups like NOW backed that legislation, or were silent on it. Similarly, media outlets were either quiet or in vocal support, i.e., the NYTimes 2020 attack on Pornhub.

SuaveSteve

I think it's real BS how two organizations control international payments.