The sad thing is that this has felt inevitable for some time.

The shadow-banning and delisting of NSFW content overnight at the behest of payment processors is the latest in a trend of anti-freedom measures perpetrated by ethnonationalists working hand in glove with big business.

In a stroke, with no warning, NSFW creators have had their livelihoods ruined with no recourse to compensation. This content was legal. It was created by adults and made available to adults who were willing to pay for it. No payment processor should act as an arbiter in such cases. A payment processor should facilitate payments, not make moral judgements. I’m not convinced anyone who works in big finance has grounds to make moral judgements anyway.

Unsurprisingly, a number of furry writers and artists have also been caught up in this, including many close friends. It is part of a recent trend where puritans have tried to sanitise the internet and mold it based on their own dogmatic beliefs. This is clearly a freedom of speech issue and laws in the U.S., U.K. and EU should protect us, yet I doubt defending sex workers and ‘pornographers’ is going to win many votes. The upshot of this will be stifling of freedom of expression and the world becoming a greyer, more monochrome place. Of course, this is exactly what the dogmatists want.

Times are certainly dark, particularly as this is not the first platform to succumb. By banning NSFW content, it is a direct attack on queer expression. And we should be clear about what this is. Queer erasure. That’s the ultimate end game. You can see it in the anti-trans laws which are being introduced to the statute books in many countries. You can see it in the increasingly expressed view that queer life is perverse. You can see it in the removal of DEI protections and LGBTQ+ apparel in stores. You can see it in the defunding of Pride events and the removal of Pride flags from government buildings. This is just another tentacle of the filthy fascist octopus. Things do not look good.

However, there are things we can do. We can contact the payment processors and raise our objections. We can contact the platforms themselves. We can sign petitions (there are more than one) and pressure our elected representatives. There’s a Fair Access to Banking Act going through U.S. Congress, we can rally behind that. All details are in my Bluesky posts for today.

Then, more locally, we can buy directly from NSFW content creators. We can promote their art, books and video games on social media and to friends. We can be rigorous and steadfast in our opposition to generative AI models that devalue art and thus the human experience.

And we can be fully and unashamedly our queer selves. This Saturday is Berlin Pride and I have every intention of going down there and being who I am (whether that’s a pup, a pony, a furry, in my fem gear, or something else entirely). I only started properly expressing myself five or so years ago and it feels more important than ever.

However, despite this call to arms, it’s also clear we need to find websites that will stand up to this extreme conservatism and payment methods that are happy with NSFW content. For the last 25 years, capitalism has triumphed over so-called ‘moral concerns’, but the pendulum seems to be shifting. This year, 2025, has been so damaging already.

There are precious few platforms left and you can guarantee that the puritans will be gunning for those too. It is clear that the LGBTQ+ community, and furry by association, is under the greatest threat since the 1990s. We need to stand tall and push back, but we also need to stand together.

Finally, from my own perspective, my dream of becoming a full-time writer has become a little more difficult today. Maybe it will now never happen. I regret waiting over 10 years to start writing again in the belief I wasn’t good enough. I’ve lost a lot of time and maybe that’s the one thing I’m now running out of. But I’ll keep writing until I no longer can because I also know the pendulum will one day swing back. If we mobilise, that will be sooner than we realise.