The takeaway: Kickstarter is rolling back a recently implemented policy regarding adult-oriented content following a negative response from its community of creators and backers. It's not a perfect solution, but rather a temporary fix to right a wrong.
Last week, the crowdfunding platform introduced new rules on the subject of adult content that were meant to give creators more clarity up front before launching projects. Instead, the revised rules had the opposite impact and reportedly clouded the category with more confusion.
COO Sean Leow said the decision to modify the rules in the first place was largely driven by their payment provider, Stripe, which operates on its own set of legal guidelines and compliance requirements outside of Kickstarter. This complicates how services can pay creators for mature content, and is the exact issue the updated rules were trying to address.
According to Leow, it's not uncommon for campaigns to get the green light by Kickstarter and then be suspended by Stripe mid-funding. In some instances, it can happen weeks into a project that the creator has spent months or even years developing. Leow said Kickstarter has advocated for such creators in the past and has had success in getting their campaigns reinstated, but they also realized there was no end in sight and that eventually, some campaigns would fail to regain approval.
By changing their rules and giving creators a single set of guidelines, Kickstarter hoped to close the gap between their rules and Stripe's. Instead, it left the community "vulnerable," Leow said.
To make matters right, Kickstarter is eliminating the new rules and reverting back to their previous guidelines for mature content. The company admits the previous way of doing things is barebones and not as specific as they'd like, and that Stripe can still suspend campaigns that have been approved by Kickstarter.
Leow described it as an "imperfect temporary solution." To better help clarify matters, Kickstarter has added a note about Stripe's policies and a link to their guidelines on their own rules page. The crowdfunding platform has also published a guide designed to help creators better understand what might trigger a review and how to present mature content to reduce the risk of disruption.