Online nudity, often a safe space for individuals to explore identities and interests, is being restricted by social networks and payment processors. This censorship silences less powerful voices and removes a crucial form of engagement for many users.
True Naked Yoga, an online platform for naked yoga videos, was recently banned by payment processor Stripe for being a “restricted business“. Despite no previous warnings or flagged issues, Stripe gave the platform just four days’ notice before closing the account.
Payment services are essential for businesses and nonprofits, and their abrupt actions can disrupt lawful speech. Therefore, it’s important that payment processors provide ample notice and an appeal right to users before enforcing their terms of service.
True Naked Yoga has also faced bans from marketing platform MailChimp and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube. These actions by payment intermediaries and social media platforms are arbitrarily defining what kind of speech and nudity can exist online. It’s time for these entities to stop censoring legal content.