Ko-fi Content Guidelines

Ko-fi believes in freedom for creators to produce the content that they want and their fans enjoy. However, Ko-fi must be a safe place for everyone and cannot be a venue for illegal, hateful, violent or sexual content.

Payment Provider Requirements

Without payment providers such as PayPal and Stripe, there can be no Ko-fi.

Ko-fi facilitates payments using PayPal and Stripe. As a result, creators must adhere to the guidelines and terms of use imposed by PayPal and Stripe. Ko-fi needs to take action to remove content and restrict Ko-fi members from using the platform should they violate the terms set out by our payment partners.

For the avoidance of doubt, creators must not use Ko-fi in any way that conflicts with PayPal's acceptable use policy or content that conflicts with Stripe's prohibited businesses terms which creators themselves agree to on an individual basis when they sign up for these services.

Scope of Guidelines

These guidelines apply to all aspects of the Ko-fi platform including but not limited to imagery, text, video, audio, services, physical items*, and links located anywhere on Ko-fi including direct messages, galleries, profiles, posts, comments, commissions, shop, and any other location where content can be added to the service.

Links or references to Ko-fi from other web pages or profiles containing prohibited content and from Ko-fi to other web pages or profiles containing prohibited content are also subject to these guidelines. Creators should also not use Ko-fi to make arrangements to sell/send prohibited content off-site e.g. via third-party messaging services.

*With regard to the sale or offer of physical items, our Content Guidance on Physical Items article offers some further clarification - this information is additional; our main guidelines still apply.

Strictly Prohibited Content or Uses of Ko-fi

Ko-fi pages and content must not be used in connection with any of the following:

• Any activity that violates any law or governmental regulation, money laundering regulation or industry requirement.
• Child sexual abuse material (CSAM), including fictitious variants (e.g. loli/shota content, AI-generated content) and content that whatsoever sexualises children - Ko-fi reports CSAM to the relevant authority/law enforcement.
• Any form of illegal content.
  
• Content that glorifies and/or encourages self-harm or suicide.
• Selling, buying, or stating intent to sell or buy real weapons, along with their parts, accessories or ammunition.
  
• Acts of coercion/emotional blackmail/threatening harm to oneself or others as a means of soliciting donations or payments of any kind.
• Hate speech, harassment, intimidation or abuse targeting any individual, group, or institution. This includes culturally insensitive language or visual representations, abuse directed at conditions, diseases, and mental health disorders. Degrading or bullying a person or persons through artwork, photo alteration, and other media is also against our terms of use and guidelines.
  
• All forms of sexual harassment (cyberflashing, cyberstalking, uninvited sexual remarks/advances/requests, etc.)
  
• Harmful misinformation (e.g. Holocaust denial, political conspiracies, pandemic-related conspiracies and medical falsehoods, etc.)
• Deliberate doxing (i.e. sharing an individual’s private details, such as their full name and address, contact info, private social media handle(s), and/or an aggregation of non-private information such as their name, photograph and city/town of residence, with the intention of harming their reputation and/or publicly exposing them) - please respect everyone’s privacy, including that of Ko-fi staff.
• Political or religious radicalism and other extreme views, especially if designed to malign, condemn or undermine a specific group/demographic.
  
• Funding a ransom, human trafficking or exploitation, vigilantism, bribes or bounties.
• Products or services that directly infringe or facilitate infringement upon the trademark, patent, copyright, trade secrets, or proprietary or privacy rights of any third party e.g. unofficial translations and/or circulation of written, audio or video works.
• Spreading spyware, malware, viruses or linking to malicious websites containing such links, software or bots.
• Commercial spamming i.e. using the Ko-fi platform to boost the SEO ranking of a company or product unrelated to content creation and/or advertise on behalf of a client. For example, linking to or directly promoting gambling, spa, dentistry, medical, retail, and other third-party services.
• Content that slanders, libels, misinforms about or otherwise intentionally harms the reputation of Ko-fi, its affiliates, and other third parties.
• Transactions for the sale of items, goods or services including digital downloads with the purpose of avoiding paying taxes.
  
• Funding legal cases and challenges of any kind.
• Raffles, lotteries, giveaways or games of chance where a fee is paid to enter and winners are selected at random.
• Violent or excessively gory content or content that glorifies violence in any way.

Read the full terms and conditions of use here.

Strictly Prohibited Adult Content

Ko-fi cannot be used as the venue for sexually explicit or adult-themed content or services. This includes, but is not limited to:

• All manner of sexual services (prostitution, escorts, pay-per-view, fulfilling any fetish request, striptease/stripping, masturbation, adult chat/sexting, adult content-related rating services, etc.) For the avoidance of doubt, adult chat includes euphemisms, visual and textual.
• Pornography, depictions of rape and other forms of sexual assault (e.g. non-consensual groping, upskirting), incest, bestiality and any other adult or obscene content of a similar nature including implied, suggested or censored across all content categories (e.g. illustrative, videos, literature, audio, etc.).
• Nudity, including censored, covered or partial.
• Fetish and paraphilia content of any kind including "Findom" (financial domination) themes.
• Overly sexually suggestive content including imagery of non-nude people/animals/characters in provocative positions or scenarios (e.g. implied or emulated sexual activity).
  
• Sale of sexually explicit material, including physical items (e.g. sex toys, etc.).
  

Links to or from sites primarily associated with sexually explicit, fetish or adult-themed content are also not allowed.

Censoring Otherwise Adult Content

Censoring otherwise adult content is also strictly prohibited. This includes:

• Censoring otherwise adult content with emoji, illustrations, blurring, or other methods;
• Covering nudity with body parts or objects;
• Offering uncensored versions of content to subscribers or at third-party sites or links.
  
  

AI-generated Content

It is against Ko-fi's Terms to scrape content from the Ko-fi platform - this includes scraping for the purpose of training AI models.

The following uses in relation to AI-generated content are also strictly prohibited:

• AI models that have been trained to engage in explicit adult activities/acts;
• AI-generated content that uses the likeness of known individuals (e.g. celebrities) for NSFW purposes;
• AI-generated content proven to have directly infringed on an artist’s copyrighted work.
  
  

Content and/or behavior found to be illegal/criminal may be reported to the relevant authority.

What if I Tag My Page as NSFW (Not Safe for Work)?

Ko-fi does offer the ability to tag your page as NSFW. The NSFW tag does not permit Ko-fi members to use their page or create content that does not comply with this policy. Find out more about when to use the NSFW tag.

Limited or Unpublished Accounts

Accounts which have been flagged as inappropriate by our payment partners, Ko-fi page viewers, Ko-fi staff or our auto-filtering technology may be either limited or unpublished. Learn more about what to do if your seeing a "Pending Review" or "Page Unpublished" message when you login to Ko-fi.