Reindexing Adult NSFW Content

Today, we are re-indexing free adult NSFW content. We are still in ongoing discussions with payment processors and will be re-introducing paid content slowly to ensure we can confidently support the widest range of creators in the long term.

Note: I’ve limited the display of replies to prevent off topic discussion. If you have issues or concerns you can contact support or if you want to have a more public discourse then I recommend creating a topic in General Discussion.

If you’d like to be eligible for today’s re-indexing, your page must have the following option checked: (The “No Payments” option under the “Pricing” section of your project’s Edit Page in your Dashboard)

Important: If your page uses “individually priced files,” changing this option will convert those files to be freely available. We currently do not support a page configuration that combines “owners only” content with a page configured to be fully free with payments disabled. Given the circumstances, we are exploring new ownership options in the dashboard that may address this. At the moment, though, Only enable this option if you intend for all files on your project to be available for free.

We are also implementing a new “content warnings” system for pages tagged as NSFW. To be eligible for indexing, all page owners will be required to complete this. This feature is not yet ready, but we will post an update when it is. If your page was previously indexed, you will have a time window to complete this requirement to avoid going in and out of indexing.

Stripe Update

For those who aren’t aware, Stripe is one of the payment processors we’ve used since our early days. They have provided the “Pay with card” option on our checkout page for over 10 years.

We spoke with Stripe yesterday about their content policies. They confirmed that they will not be able to support adult content that fits the following definition: “content designed for sexual gratification.”

Stripe asked us to pass along the following message to our users:

Stripe is currently unable to support sexually explicit content due to restrictions placed on them by their banking partners, despite card networks generally supporting adult content (with the appropriate registrations). Stripe has indicated that they hope to be able to support adult content in the future.

We are in the process of talking with other payment partners to accept card payments that Stripe is unable to process. We disabled Stripe payments last week on pages identified as having “adult NSFW content.” Now that we have a more specific definition from Stripe, we may review that initial list for potential re-introduction. However, our long-term plan is to implement one or more new processors to avoid putting the platform at risk.

Glossary

• adult NSFW content — This is the term we are using for the criteria applied in last week’s audit of adult content. It refers to pages that have both the “Contains sensitive material” option checked and a tag suggesting adult content (e.g., “porn,” “mature,” “lewd,” “erotic,” “hentai,” “fetish”).
• deindexed — A state where a project is removed from all public discovery channels on itch.io. A deindexed page will not appear in search results, browse pages, or recommendations. However, the page is otherwise fully functional, and will appear normally in collections, libraries, and profile pages. Access to files included on the page are not restricted in any way.