This summer, without fanfare, Steam began purging adult games from its platform—not because of new laws, but because of pressure from the companies that handle your credit card. Around the same time, Itch.io followed suit, citing concerns from payment processors. Fansly also recently updated its terms to restrict furry and hypnosis content. And last week, a new ACLU petition began circulating with fresh urgency, targeting Mastercard for its restrictive regulatory policies.
None of this was a coincidence. What we’re witnessing is a new chapter in the slow, systemic erasure of online nudity—not just pornography, but any expression that nudges against puritanical norms. At the heart of it all are financial gatekeepers like Mastercard and Visa, whose behind-the-scenes rules quietly reshape what platforms allow, what creators can publish, and who gets paid. Sex work is merely the scapegoat. What this is really about about is controlling art, about silencing speech, and about hegemonizing who gets to show their body—and who doesn’t.
Master’s cards
In 2021, Mastercard implemented a sweeping new policy regulating adult content platforms that reverberated far beyond its stated aim of combating exploitation. Announced in April and formally enacted in October of that year, the policy imposed requirements such as pre-approval of all uploaded content, strict identity and age verification for performers, and the prohibition of certain search terms deemed “risky” by the company.1 While Mastercard claimed these measures were aimed at preventing abuse, they introduced extreme burdens for small platforms and independent creators—especially sex workers—who rely on digital payments to earn a living.2
But the scope of the threat doesn’t, and never has, ended with adult content platforms. The policy’s ripple effects have made their way into the broader ecosystem of nude expression online. From fine art photography to educational documentaries, nude yoga instructors, naturist blogs and newsletters like this one, any work that features nudity—even in non-sexual, non-explicit contexts—now faces a greater risk of financial deplatforming. If your work involves the human body in its natural state, access to payment systems is increasingly precarious.
In response to these impacts, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a coalition of partner organizations filed a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission in 2023, calling Mastercard’s adult content rules an unfair business practice that censors legal expression and destabilizes lawful livelihoods. The complaint highlights how Mastercard’s vague and onerous guidelines have pressured payment processors and platforms to over-correct—often silencing constitutionally protected speech in the process.3
Building on that action, the ACLU recently launched a new public petition in 2025 demanding that Mastercard repeal the policy and engage directly with sex workers and adult content creators to craft inclusive, equitable standards. As the petition gains momentum—spreading rapidly across social media and drawing tens of thousands of signatures—the underlying concerns remain the same: that Mastercard’s policy enables a privatized system of censorship, undermining the ability of creators to publish, organize, and earn a living online.
Steamrolled
The real-world impact of these financial policies became impossible to ignore this summer. On July 16, Steam, the world’s largest PC gaming storefront, updated its publisher guidelines with a new clause: platforms may not host content that violates “the rules and standards set forth by Steam’s payment processors and related card networks and banks.”4 Within days, dozens of adult games (many with extreme or taboo themes) were delisted from the platform, not because of criminality, but because credit card companies didn’t like the optics.
Itch.io, another beloved indie gaming platform known for its openness to queer and NSFW creators, followed suit. A blog post from founder Leaf Corcoran admitted the decision to deindex adult games from browse and search pages was driven by pressure from payment partners. “To ensure that we can continue to operate and provide a marketplace for all developers,” Corcoran wrote, “we must prioritize our relationship with our payment partners and take immediate steps toward compliance.”5
The compliance Corcoran refers to isn’t mandated by law—it’s defined by vague, evolving standards set by Visa, Mastercard, and the banks that underwrite them. When those companies decide that certain kinds of nudity, queerness, or kink are too risky, platforms are forced to choose between free expression and financial viability. Unsurprisingly, they almost always choose the latter, suppressing the former with broad, indiscriminate strokes.
But amid the backlash, some creators are finding ways to turn censorship into action. One VTuber, known as EmberTalks, responded to Fansly’s crackdown on furry and kink-themed adult content by launching a fundraiser for the ACLU. Rather than retreating from the platform changes, she pledged 100 percent of her new subscription revenue to support the fight against financial censorship—ultimately raising over $780. As reported by VICE, Ember described her donation as a way to push back against “anti-democratic movements” and signal that the clampdown on niche adult content is just the beginning. “These precedents strongly imply further speech bans,” she wrote, “and will not simply stop at just pornography.”6
Who gets to be seen?
One thing that makes this moment frustrating—and frankly, so dangerous—is that no legislation is required. There are no hearings, no debates. Financial deplatforming arrives without announcement, buried in terms of service, or silently embedded in code. A rule gets added. A game disappears. An artist is demonetized. A page gets flagged “sensitive.” Nothing is explicitly banned, and yet everything is harder to publish, harder to find, harder to fund. For creators of adult content, the consequences are immediate and severe.
But the net catches far more than porn. Queer stories get flagged as explicit. Trans artists find their work labeled “sexual.” A nude photograph of a fat body gets filtered while an oil painting of a thin one does not.
Platforms like this one, which publish nude imagery in artistic, documentary, and historical contexts, now operate under constant threat, not because of what they show, but because of how opaque algorithms and faceless compliance teams might interpret that content. In fact, Planet Nude was recently deplatformed by Facebook over non-explicit nudist cartoons—an illustration of how easily cultural and educational nudity can be algorithmically mistaken for something illicit.
Between moralistic payment platforms, amoral streamers, manipulative social media firms (too many to count), abusive AI, age verification laws, and even intrusion from your operating system, the suppression of nude expression/human expression online becomes a massive and pervasive threat to speech.
All of this raises a deeply political question: who gets to be visible? What kinds of bodies are allowed to appear online? Who gets to depict them, monetize them, archive them?
We know how this usually plays out. Platforms don’t err on the side of inclusion—they err on the side of risk aversion. And when nudity is treated as a liability, the first to be erased are always the same: queer bodies, Black and brown bodies, fat bodies, disabled bodies, trans bodies. Then go the sex workers, the experimental artists, the subcultures, the educators. Then go the zines, the newsletters, the archives. Sex work may be the first target, but what’s being restricted isn’t just labor. It’s presence. It’s culture. It’s history. I’s humanity. And it’s happening now, with little public scrutiny—because the institutions doing the censoring aren’t governments. They’re banks.
What you can do
There are few silver linings to any of this, but there are pressure points. One of them is public outcry. After all, Mastercard only reversed its initial move against OnlyFans in 2021 after an international backlash. If these companies are going to act as moral arbiters, we need to treat them like political actors and hold them accountable.
You can start by signing the ACLU petition urging Mastercard to reverse its adult content policy and engage directly with those it affects most.
You can also support independent artists and platforms who rely on nude expression. And you can speak openly about what’s happening. That, too, is a form of resistance. 🪐
More reading
Val Webber. The Impact of Mastercard’s Adult Content Policy on Adult Content Creators (survey/report detailing policy implemented April–October 2021) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358441297_The_Impact_of_Mastercard's_Adult_Content_Policy_on_Adult_Content_Creators
LaLa B Holston‑Zannell (ACLU). How Mastercard's New Policy Violates Sex Workers' Rights. (Official release dated October 15, 2021) https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/how-mastercards-new-policy-violates-sex-workers-rights
American Civil Liberties Union. (2023, August 30). Sex workers and legal advocates file Federal Trade Commission complaint against Mastercard. ACLU. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/sex-workers-and-legal-advocates-file-federal-trade-commission-complaint-against-mastercard
Bonk, L. (2025, July 16). Steam now bans games that violate the rules and standards of payment processors and banks. Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/gaming/steam-now-bans-games-that-violate-the-rules-and-standards-of-payment-processors-and-banks-164222173.html
Weatherbed, J. (2025, July 24). Itch.io follows Steam in removing adult games. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/news/712890/itch-removes-adult-nsfw-games-steam-payment-providers
Valens, A. (2025, July 17). This VTuber just raised over $780 for the ACLU. After Steam’s new content policies? Her anti-censorship message is urgent. VICE. https://www.vice.com/en/article/this-vtuber-just-raised-over-780-for-the-aclu-after-steams-new-content-policies-her-anti-censorship-message-is-urgent
Gnash my teeth! So is it better to stop using my MasterCard entirely OR to expand its use to every time I purchase antique books that contain the history of nudism or art that contains the human form? I have already donated to the ALCU, which got its start defending birth control information and defended Dr. Parmelee's importation of his book on nudist history. For more I would recommend "How Sex Became a Civil Liberty" by Leigh Ann Wheeler, 2013.
“The land of the free and the home of the brave” … my fat naked ass! 😡 It truly seems the walls are closing in from every direction! Thanks for creating awareness, Evan!