Following its unexpected announcement last week of stricter new regulations targeting "adult content," crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has faced strong backlash from its creator community. Earlier, Kickstarter officially...Issue a statementThe government announced a "complete withdrawal" of the controversial new policy and restored the original, more lenient regulations.
The platform officially admitted, unusually, that the new rules were introduced to comply with the strict policies of payment processing giant Stripe. However, this decision caused Kickstarter to lose its core "counterculture" spirit, thus putting the community at a disadvantage.
A sudden policy shift: Hearing the "loud and clear" voice of the community.
Last week, Kickstarter released a new set of guidelines for adult content. While the policy claims to still allow crowdfunding for romantic and risqué literature (including comics), it imposes extremely strict standards on the boundaries of pornography and sexually suggestive content. This immediately sparked panic and protests from many creators, especially independent comic book artists and other artists.
Faced with overwhelming anger, Kickstarter admitted in its latest statement that the community's feedback made them "loud and clear" that the platform had made a mistake, and therefore decided to immediately revert to the previous, more lenient rules (the old rules still prohibited illegal and purely pornographic content, but the framework was more streamlined and less strict).
Behind the Scenes: Policy Pressure from Payment Giant Stripe
In its statement, Kickstarter also helplessly revealed the real reason for this "constant policy changes"—the payment service provider Stripe.
Over the past few months, Kickstarter has noticed an increasing number of fundraising projects that have "already passed the platform's review" being suddenly suspended by Stripe halfway through their fundraising efforts, citing "violations of payment policies."
Although Kickstarter made several attempts to intervene and successfully persuaded Stripe to unfreeze funds, allowing the project to run smoothly, not every negotiation was successful. To resolve this dual-track problem, Kickstarter originally planned to "adjust" the gap between its own policies and Stripe's policies, so that creators would only face one set of standards, which is the origin of last week's stringent new rules.
They've rediscovered their anti-establishment sentiments, but underlying concerns remain.
In its official post, Kickstarter expressed strong self-reflection: "Standardization was our original intention, but the decision we made is tantamount to abandoning Kickstarter's core counterculture spirit, which makes our community extremely vulnerable."
Although the old rules have been reinstated, Kickstarter admits this is only an "imperfect temporary solution." Stripe still retains the authority to suspend specific projects based on its own policies. In response, Kickstarter promises to be more proactive in supporting creators and assisting them in fine-tuning their project content to ensure successful payment review by Stripe.
