Explaining content restrictions on SLR: clear consent, no alcohol, no drugs, etc
We’ve had some people questioning why some content isn’t allowed on SLR and we’d like to explain exactly why. Read on for more details.
To put it simply, we are obliged to obey the rules given by banks and billing providers such as MasterCard and Visa, plus all the other institutions a company has to comply with in order to stay in business.
Most porn companies play a game of whack-a-mole, going from one company to another in order to stay in business. However, we want to establish a solid foundation and make SLR a great safe and reliable place for everyone. Many otherwise successful companies have been closed down for falling foul of these rules, and we do not want to be part of that. We’re sure you don’t either.
The tricky thing is that we don't even know the exact rules to adhere to. Every business link in the chain has its own rules, some stricter than others. More importantly, they all interpret the rules differently. At SLR, we believe we have a better idea than most about what is required from a modern, law-abiding business in this industry.
At its core, SLR is about grown adults having consensual sex and depicting this in the best way possible. With all this in mind, we have come up with some simple rules:
No alcohol, even if it doesn’t play a role in the scene. If a scene has this, we will try to re-edit or blur items where possible, in order to keep the scene live on SLR.
Banned words (aka stopwords) have to stay completely off the site. We must replace those with ***** in comments and mark them with: "This post was automatically moderated to comply with website policies". There are web crawlers checking SLR constantly for these terms so we need to be strict on this.
- No guns, no knifes, nothing forced or non-consensual
- No drugs, hypnosis or anything related to not giving full consent
- Pissing is ok, but no pee drinking.
Some JAV studios often play with taboo themes, which would obviously fail on these rules. We are currently addressing this throughout the entire SLR platform. We can't disclose our exact policies, but we are doing our best to communicate things clearly and helpfully with our community and creators.
The ultimate vision of SLR is that pairing VR with haptics makes the experience so great and impressive that our users won’t even want any of the outlandish scenarios commonly found on the tube sites.
You can join in the discussion about this over on our forum post . Our compliance expert, Polar, goes into more detail:
"To give a little more background, both of the major card networks have a fairly short list of banned practices, as well as a much wider ban on anything that would bring that card network into disrepute by being associated with it. The penalties for banks who process such "brand damaging transactions" are significant, and that tends to mean they will err on the side of caution.
So that short list gets pretty long and pretty broad.
To give a real example, a few years ago some billers banned vampire fantasy content. The logical progression was that the card networks both ban depictions of non-consensual mutilation, so it's safer to ban all depictions of mutilation, which was expanded to a total prohibition on showing any blood, so you can't have vampires.
Similarly someone who is drunk, or drugged, or hypnotised, or asleep cannot consent to sexual activity, so depictions of these activities, even when it is clearly fantasy, are not allowed.
You may be aware that VISA is currently being sued alongside the operator of a major tube site for profiting from illegal material. The banking industry is on high alert.
To be clear, we're not out to kink shame, and us not being able to host certain content is not a moral judgement about that content or those who enjoy it. Wherever possible we will try to work to keep content compliant and online.
There was a discussion on the forum recently about "stepfamily" content. Both card networks have an explicit ban on depictions of incest which leads to the "step" modifier being used... liberally. But we also understand that some people are really into daddy or mommy talk without the step modifier being used. That can happen, the scene just needs to be presented as being a sugardaddy or sugarmommy scenario instead.
We want to bring everyone the content they love, and we genuinely appreciate how the passion of the community shows in the forum and comments.
We will continue to push things forward and make SLR a place where you can explore, experiment, and improve your sexual wellness."