#Pornocalypse Comes To GoFundMe

Wednesday, September 10th, 2014 -- by Bacchus

Under fire from a variety of different directions, the crowd-funding platform GoFundMe, which had hitherto been one of the most relaxed of the crowdfunding platforms, just banned a whole raft of different types of fundraisers. This Washington Post article has the whole story. The part that’s relevant to the sex-positive world: as part of the changes, GoFundMe substantially beefed up its prohibition against fundraising that touches upon any of the adult industries. Here is what the GoFundMe terms of service had to say on the subject as of August 24:

You may not use the GoFundMe service for activities that … relate to sales of … items that are considered obscene [or] certain sexually oriented materials or services.

Pretty vague, and certainly GoFundMe was never adult-friendly. But the new terms they announced yesterday are rather more dramatically pronounced in their condemnation of porn and sex and anybody who admits to having anything to do with those things:

In order to ensure a positive experience for all visitors, the purpose of your GoFundMe campaign must not relate to any of the following items.

Adult Material
Sexually explicit
Sexually suggestive
Adult services or products
Pornography of any kind
Cosmetic sexual enhancements
Relating to adult industry
Content associated with or relating to any of the items above.

Of course that right there is a badly-written word salad that can mean whatever they want it to mean. But it’s very clear what they do mean: “No smut, and nothing to help smutty people. Go away, smutty people. Go far away.”

The Pornocalypse comes for us all, and yesterday it came for GoFundMe.

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