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Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

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Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#281
post #228

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.

I think nobody is concerned about this because most campaigns just deliver what they promised.

Etsy used to be awesome, now it isn't. Lots of mass-produced junk played off as quality made-with-care-and-attention kinda stuff. It's even easier with AI images, videos, description and communications.

I think kickstarter is gonna have (or maybe already has?) a scam problem due to the rise of AI.

I've contributed to about 7 campaigns; only one didn't work out. But the person running it actually refunded me fully (about 200$) after 3 or 4 years of very occasional updates.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this no longer on the front page of HN? This should be the top article. It's only an hour old and has hundreds up upvotes. The payments industry is strong arming free speech to promote religious fundamentalism. There is no such thing as vice content being higher risk. That's a diversion topic. Fewer and fewer people are hiding porn payments from their wives. We don't need the religious oligarchy dictating how…

No it isn't. It's struggling on the front page because this is a very old story and it's the same conversation every time: payment processors hate this stuff because digital goods are fraud and chargeback magnets, and that's doubly true of adult content.

This would be a reason for processing such transactions to be more expensive.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#283

"Forced to ban adult content by payment processors" If you go through and click all the links and hunt down the source, the final source underlying it all is a comic author who says, without quoting anything, or any proof, that that's the reason why. Just a random guy saying that Stripe made them ban it, without any evidence. I'm the King of England. There, I guess I "am" the King of England, because all it takes is…

>>There, I guess I "am" the King of England, because all it takes is for a random person to make a statement and it becomes true.

Sir/Ma'am, this is HN, we dont actually read the articles here. WE just look at the title and get outraged

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet X can still accept payments even though it officially allows paid CSAM generation. I am not sure if CSAM is the only reason for this group - notice they specifically listed MILF/DILF, that doesn't involve or imply CSAM in any way.

"CSAM generation" is an oxymoron. The justification behind criminalizing mere possession of CSAM is that it requires the abuse of a child to produce. This is not the case with fictional content. If the media does not depict an actual child being abused, is is by definition not CSAM.

I'm partially with you on that one ("computer generated") but the laws converge to the position that if the computer-generated pixels are arranged in such a way that it's a young human, it's CSAM.

Also we're not arguing the language here or its adherence to the specific reality, but the blunt tool the laws are.

Putting other countries laws aside, I believe that digitally manipulating the image of the real child in that way results in the production of the actual CSAM and as such is a federal crime.

And back to my previous comment - actual children are involved, so the abuse actually happens. If you doubt it, feel free to read up about women who experienced their own AI-manipulated pictures to make them appear naked - I don't think you deny the actual harm here.

In terms of generation (harming pixels), I think the idea of the lawmakers is to criminalise similar ones as well ("indistinguishable from a real child") to offer some protections to real children.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it isn't. It's struggling on the front page because this is a very old story and it's the same conversation every time: payment processors hate this stuff because digital goods are fraud and chargeback magnets, and that's doubly true of adult content.

If U.S. credit-card issuers were worried about fraud, they would have implemented the other half of "chip-&-PIN," which the rest of the world has been using for decades. U.S. customers pretty much JUST got chips in our cards... but issuers "forgot" to implement the PIN part. Zero sympathy for this scumbag monopoly.

Chip & pin doesn’t help with chargebacks or merchant fraud which is what costs credit card processors and issuers in adult content.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this no longer on the front page of HN? This should be the top article. It's only an hour old and has hundreds up upvotes. The payments industry is strong arming free speech to promote religious fundamentalism. There is no such thing as vice content being higher risk. That's a diversion topic. Fewer and fewer people are hiding porn payments from their wives. We don't need the religious oligarchy dictating how…

[flagged]

> There is no "religious oligarchy" dictating anything.

You might inform Peter Thiel.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-...

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#288
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you dig, this issue has been brewing for quite some time. Long story short, its the hard-right conservatives and/or Christians who demand everybody *else* follow their recidivist ethics. Exodus Cry - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry explicit christian thinktank Collective Shout - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Shout not explicitly christian, but mirrors Exodus Cry almost verbatim Going down the r…

You have a clear history of anti-Christian sentiment on this site. Your comments repeatedly go beyond criticism of specific abuses and into broad hostility toward Christianity and Catholicism as such.

To be clear, its an anti-Abrahamic sentiment. This includes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We don't see much of Hinduism and Buddhism and Jainism where I'm at. And none of them are forcing their own religion as state/federal bills. (Although... India has a pretty bad Hindu nationalism problem, sigh.)

At least in the USA (where I live), the Christians cant seem to follow their own rules. Instead, they seek to force their rules on everyone by subverting government by aligning with republicans and creating voting blocs. Ive even had christians in my local community publicly tell people (in service) to vote for trump going back to 2015, and later in 2022-2023. -- back when it was expressly illegal to do such as a church.

I even had christian pastors publicly attack my MiL (she was a director for a local nonprofit). Called her the antichrist and a bunch of other shit. that spillover even hit my SO when they were doing in-home healthcare. Was chased out of their house with a crucifix wall hanging.

Of course, trump's IRS now made church-based political endorsement legal. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/07/11/irs-...

If they wanted to practice their own rules, I dont care. When they shift to forcing *me* to follow their rules, yeah, I'll be hostile.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"CSAM generation" is an oxymoron. The justification behind criminalizing mere possession of CSAM is that it requires the abuse of a child to produce. This is not the case with fictional content. If the media does not depict an actual child being abused, is is by definition not CSAM.

I'm partially with you on that one ("computer generated") but the laws converge to the position that if the computer-generated pixels are arranged in such a way that it's a young human, it's CSAM. Also we're not arguing the language here or its adherence to the specific reality, but the blunt tool the laws are. Putting other countries laws aside, I believe that digitally manipulating the image of the real child in th…

> Putting other countries laws aside, I believe that digitally manipulating the image of the real child in that way results in the production of the actual CSAM and as such is a federal crime.

No, it's not. People have been charged, but their convictions overturned. E.g: https://capcentral.org/case_summaries/people-v-gerber/

> As the United States Supreme Court found in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2002) 535 U.S. 234, 250-251, “[v]irtual child pornography is not ‘intrinsically related’ to the sexual abuse of children . . .. ” The nexus between such images and exploitation of children is “contingent and indirect.” The images created by Gerber is akin to virtual child pornography since the superimposing of a child’s head on adult pornographic images does not involve the sexual exploitation of an actual child. Thus, mere possession of them is protected under the First Amendment.

Re: Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if the merchant folds or disappears? Stripe (or Visa or whoever) then are the bagholder. And if someone has a ton of chargebacks, it's not uncommon they're then difficult to collect from.

Then hold back a portion of funds in escrow.

Ah good job, you fixed it. I suggest you let Stripe and Visa know, I'm sure they'll be keen.
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