Kickstarter Killed Their NSFW Ban... It's Not the End

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]Comicbook creators got a bit of a victory this week against the censorship apparatus that is coming up around us I think over the last few years. We've all kind of started to notice that maybe it's not the government we should be worried about anymore trying to infringe on our First Amendment protected rights and all that kind of stuff. Maybe it's actually businesses out there trying to control what you're able to publish, what you're able to produce based on very very vague guidelines and they can kind of pick and choose the winners and losers and all that kind of stuff. Which I think is downright un-American. Not surprisingly when Kickstarter announced these NSFW bans for mature content and all that kind of stuff, there was an enormous amount of pushback and rightfully so. Thankfully, they've made a correct decision. And if you're looking for a comicbook company that definitely believes in free speech and the ability to have beautiful ladies and men on comicbook covers, you are looking for the 616 Comics, the home of the sickest covers you will find anywhere.

[00:00:56]Look at this beautiful Ivan Talavera Gun Honey comicbook.

[00:01:00]Stripe or Kickstarter under their old rules probably would have banned something like this. And why would they?

[00:01:06]It's absolutely immaculate. Now let's talk about this small victory for comicbook creators. Kickstarter has just reverted their restricted NSFW rules it had previously put in place. And in a blog post titled "An apology, rethinking our mature content guidelines" has outright confirmed that the botched guidelines were primarily driven by requirements from Kickstarter's payment processor Stripe. For now, Kickstarter has reverted to its previous guidelines that merely prohibit pornography and illegal content. But Kickstarter made a point of noting that the newly reverted guidelines now, once again, mean that Stripe can still suspend a campaign that Kickstarter has approved. However, the rules page does include a small update, a link titled Stripe's prohibited and restricted business list. As I mentioned, this is a very small victory because Kickstarter has reverted their policy, but you still have the looming shadow of Stripe out there with the ability to unilaterally go in there and disapprove or unapprove projects that do not violate Kickstarter guidelines or rules. And I think we are definitely doing more than just traversing a slippery slope where we start allowing corporations to go out there and unilaterally shut down business and stuff like that because they have rules that supersede somehow the Constitution. And while I definitely do believe that the founding fathers, when they were drafting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, realizing that the most dangerous apparatus out there in the world is tyrannical government, I don't think they could have foresaw that you might have corporations going out there looking to censor people. And a lot of times, that's probably on behalf of the government as they're trying to go around the Constitution and our free speech and all these type of things. It brings up a much bigger issue than just this particular circumstance. And we did have a question for the weekly Q&A that I do with Doc every single Sunday on Think Critical Patreon and channel memberships, where somebody asked about this. Obviously, this was pre-reversing the ruling, but we had a really good conversation. This was never meant to be a video, so I'm not looking to camera.

[00:03:13]I'm looking at Doc, and he's somewhere around right there. So, I do apologize for that, but the conversation and the information was so important that I did want to share it with you today.

[00:03:22]>> Every time you have one of these arbitrary kind of knee-jerk rules, they're not given any thought. Well, they're also not given a a chance in public forum to discuss the pros and cons and and >> why you might be opposed or in support of it. They just do it.

[00:03:41]>> Yes, exactly. They they just do it. Um very arbitrary. The >> Yes, it is very arbitrary. It's applied very arbitrarily, and it is Well, it's applied selectively to people that they don't like a lot of times.

[00:03:57]Yeah, a lot of times that's arbitrary, too, because they they like them one day, they dislike them another day. And then it is the law of inevitability, it's the law of unintended consequences.

[00:04:10]Here's a great example. There for a while, you couldn't talk about What is it? Misleading science or something like that about COVID. talk about COVID. on YouTube, and it just meant that you couldn't talk about it, period. You couldn't have a discussion honest about it if you had any type of opposing view to it to what people were actually doing, and they used it as an impetus to shut down like thousands of channels.

[00:04:35]Perfectly exactly. This is why I'm not a big fan of this. I'm not a big fan of corporate determined, you know, acceptable discourse. Or in this case, art.

[00:04:49]Yes.

[00:04:51]In in this case, art. But at the same time, like, look, I believe that section 230 needs looked at seriously.

[00:05:01]I think that any company that decides what limits are going on there beyond criminal uh like, you know, illegal behavior, especially when it comes to uh graphic or sexualized anything that's not illegal, I don't think I think that if publisher or if if platforms start determining who and what is allowed up there as long as it's within the bounds of legality, I think that they should lose their 230 protections because they've now become a publisher, they are not a platform. I think what the really overarching issue and the really scary thing is there are a lot of private companies and really technological companies, companies that rely on technology, that see themselves as the arbiter of what is acceptable in in society, and they overrule or go past and beyond like government oversight and have created like their own like mono government, where they'll just create rules that make no sense.

[00:06:14]Yeah, and that's what I mean by and that's where section 230 really kicks in because section 230 is essentially almost explicit explicitly prohibits them from doing that because if they want to remain categorized as a platform instead of a publisher.

[00:06:36]Publishers get to choose what they put on. Platforms do not.

[00:06:40]And that was the way that it was originally written and intended. It is not the way it's been applied and it's not the way it's been interpreted and the the fact is we are at almost 20 years now of interpretation of companies internet companies interpreting the ability to censor or determine what's on their platform. We're at almost 20 years of it now without any pushback from the government regulators that are supposed to be protecting people from that sort of behavior from these companies. Look, if if a company wants to decide what's on their platform, fine. That's fine, but now you've become a publisher and you are subject to publisher rules. If you want the and publisher liability. If you want the lack of liability, you have to remain neutral even the shit that you don't like because that's the way it was written.

[00:07:48]It was written with that in mind. Look, if you want to if you want to control the limits of people's speech, you're welcome to do that, but you now have liability when they do shit that is illegal. If you want to be hold held harmless in liability, then you can't start censoring people. That's the way that it was originally intended and written. It is not the way You can censor stuff that is plainly illegal.

[00:08:15]Yes, you could you could censor anything that is clearly illegal. So, CSAM, all that stuff, 100% you can censor that.

[00:08:24]And and you have >> censor opinions you don't like that are odious to you personally.

[00:08:31]Correct. And the way that the it was originally written essentially prohibited a lot of the behavior that the the >> become rampant.

[00:08:41]has become rampant by corporations. And but because nobody enforced it on them and said, "Hey, you're acting like a publisher by doing this, you now lose your liability protection and everything. If you want to control what's said on your platform, you're responsible what's for what's happens on your platform. That was the way it was written. That's the way it was intended.

[00:09:08]It was not the way it was enforced. And as a result, we've ended up with a world where kind of like New York right now or Chicago. You have a state or a city I mean, you have two cities where crime is still is still by law illegal, but enforcement of it is so un not completed.

[00:09:29]>> outlawed, yeah. Yes, you cannot enforce it. So, yeah, it's still illegal to go and kill people.

[00:09:37]But, when you do it, there's no consequences. That is the situation that we've had. And as a result, as time goes on, those cities have gotten more dangerous. The same way that as time has gone on and you know, internet be it uh payment processors or you know, social media networks or whatever have gotten away with acting like a publisher, but maintaining the protections of a platform, they don't even realize they're doing something wrong at this point because it's been so unenforced for so long. Yeah, so I think he was probably right to say, "You guys are just missing this because it's you know, it's open to interpretation and they will use it to hurt people on a case-by-case Yeah, case-by-case basis based on things outside of just the art."

[00:10:29]And that is correct.

[00:10:30]>> And and and I agree with that completely. There will it will be used against them. Uh yeah, because when I hear, you know, pornography, it's like I don't like titty comic books. It's just not my thing. It does nothing for me.

[00:10:43]Uh you know, an explicit cover, like I wouldn't buy that. I got three little kids. I'm not bringing stuff like that to the house. But even if I didn't, I don't think I would have bought that stuff back in the day. Even before I kids, it's like, "Oh, that doesn't affect me."

[00:10:57]Well, yeah, it might not affect me, but it certainly will affect other people and it will be, you know, just enforced willy-nilly. Yes. It's bullshit.

[00:11:07]>> enforced willy-nilly because that's what happens in situations where there is a implied lack of enforcement. Where do you think we hit the point where corporations or corporate America decided that the US government the freedoms that are allowed were too much and they needed to to rein that stuff in? Oh, I know exactly when. It was when they realized that the government as long as their friendly the friendly sides of the government prevented them from being like Okay, kind of like what George Carlin said back in the day. You do not need a formal conspiracy when interests align. You had people in the private sector and people in the public sector that kind of looked at this and said oh, we want to do this, but we can't.

[00:12:07]Hi, I'm government. I want to censor this, but I can't because we have a First Amendment. But you and I get along real real well on and agree on a lot of things, Mr. Private Industry.

[00:12:19]And I'm beholden and restricted by the Constitution of the United States, so I can't go that far. Perhaps you could do it for me.

[00:12:26]Yes, perhaps you could do it for me and in exchange I look the other way. I look the other way on unethical business dealings. And I say, "Hey, there's nothing I can do, you know, there it's a free company.

[00:12:41]There's nothing I can do about that."

[00:12:43]>> I could stop them. You're supposed to have freedoms.

[00:12:46]Yeah, exactly. But hey, they're they're a private company, but only when it works out for them. The same people that say, "Oh, they're a private company, they can control everything." is also the same people saying, "Bake the cake."

[00:13:00]>> Bake it.

[00:13:01]Well, also you see the the Twitter files that Elon Musk released that just showed how much influence over that private company was linked to the federal government. Yes.

[00:13:14]Look, I mean, this I'll put it this way.

[00:13:16]The merger of and I will I will say this as plainly and clearly as humanly possible. The way that these that the government and private industry has spent the better part of the last 15 years collaborating and conspiring with each other is the 110% definition of fascism. Yes, we have been living under fascism for the majority of the last 20 years. You know why? And it's mostly from the left.

[00:13:50]Because it's And and and the right has taken their opportunities to do it, too.

[00:13:55]When they wanted to when they want to monitor what you and I are saying on the internet and Without a warrant.

[00:14:03]And the telecom companies just give them an a door into it.

[00:14:09]They And that is fascism.

[00:14:11]Because they're not doing it, the telecom companies is doing it.

[00:14:17]So, it's not actually a violation of my rights cuz the government's not doing it, the telecom company is doing it on behalf of them. And then the same way that you and I can't talk about for almost a 2 years, couldn't talk about COVID, it was the exact same people saying, "Well, we can't control what you say, but we don't like you questioning our all of our science and all of our beliefs on this. So, this private company is going to do it. Oh, well, you are now harming Now, I am Mr. BMW and the uh the the No, they just go there and look at the terms of service and they go, "You know what? Broadly speaking, we could say that talking about this in any sort of negative light, you know, violates this very vague statement." And that's all it is.

[00:15:11]But and then the government >> the terms of service. Nothing we can do about that. You signed up.

[00:15:15]>> Yep. And then going the other direction, the government goes, "Well, you know, these we're going to enforce the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, on people that want to modify their car and to now force people into either losing their warranties and and insurance or actively being able to take your car away because now and allow you them to sue you because you harmed their copyright from auto manufacturers.

[00:15:52]So, it's it's both sides are washing each other's back and you and I are the ones that are getting bent over with no soap. If you enjoyed that particular conversation and maybe you would like to ask us questions maybe along those lines or really anything when it comes to comic books and pop culture and stuff like that. You do have to be on Think Critical Patreon and channel memberships to be a part of that. The Doc is right here. Lots of awesome exclusive content on there. We do hope to see you there very, very soon.