--- title: Online censorship is crushing indie webcomics | daily.dev description: New restrictions from social media platforms and payment processors are making it harder for indie webcomic artists to share queer stories online. Webcomic... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/online-censorship-is-crushing-indie-webcomics-agfkdcznf twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Online censorship is crushing indie webcomics | daily.dev og:description: New restrictions from social media platforms and payment processors are making it harder for indie webcomic artists to share queer stories online. Webcomic... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/online-censorship-is-crushing-indie-webcomics-agfkdcznf og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/AgfkDcZnF.png og:image:alt: Online censorship is crushing indie webcomics og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Online censorship is crushing indie webcomics **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 1 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary New restrictions from social media platforms and payment processors are making it harder for indie webcomic artists to share queer stories online. Webcomic artists Hazel & Bell have shared their work online for years, and new algorithms and restrictions from payment providers are making sharing queer stories online even harder. This comic is part of Comics Against Censorship, a five-part series of original comics covering the history, impact and fight against LGBTQ2S+ censorship. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 149 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-25). **TL;DR:** Discussion is split between sympathy for creators losing payment and distribution channels and skepticism that this amounts to real 'censorship,' with many pointing out the website itself still works and payment processors (not government) are the actual bottleneck. **Sentiment:** 10% positive · 45% mixed · 45% skeptical **The case for** - Some argue payment processors should stay neutral and not block legal transactions regardless of content type. - A few suggest self-hosting plus Fediverse/POSSE approaches can reduce platform dependency even if reach suffers. - Some sympathize that algorithmic curation and ad-driven platforms create real incentives to suppress edgy or queer content. **The pushback** - Many argue this isn't true censorship since the site remains up and no government is involved \u2014 it's just loss of reach or a private platform's right to moderate. - Several commenters are skeptical the issue is really about LGBTQ censorship rather than general NSFW/furry content policies. - Some see hypocrisy in people who previously defended platforms' right to ban content now complaining when it affects them. - Crypto and decentralized alternatives are criticized as impractical due to network effects and conversion friction. **By community** - hackernews (heated): Debate splits between those sympathetic to creators losing payment/distribution access and those insisting this isn't real censorship, with sharp political sniping throughout. **Hottest debate:** Whether losing reach on private platforms and payment processors actually constitutes 'censorship' versus just normal content moderation. **Open questions** - How can creators get paid for adult-adjacent content without relying on a handful of fragile payment processors? - Would decentralized alternatives like the Fediverse or crypto payments actually solve the discovery and payment problems at scale? - Is the core issue queer content specifically, or broader NSFW/furry content policies that happen to overlap with queer creators? **Highlights** > Censorship means someone took your freedom of speech. That hasn’t happened here. They’ve only lost freedom of reach. Webcomics in the old days just had normal old web sites. Nothing stops them from continuing to do it the old way. Many webcomics do. If you want the reach of a big platform, comply with their TOS. To the extent possible use the big platforms to steer people to your normal web site where your uncensored content is. This isn’t hard. > — [Apreche on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50230969) > > While it doesn't solve the payment processor issues As I understand it, money is the core of it. Everything else would be accessory if the payment processor part got solved. > — [makeitdouble on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50230129) > Isn't this exactly what certain webcomic authors wanted? The platforms are showing them the door. As they say if it is not government making the rules it is not censorship. It is something that some webcomic authors fully wanted and have actively supported politically. > — [Ekaros on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229850) > Look. This has been bugging me for decades. Every time a topic like this gets brought up, I can't square it with the fact that, right now, I can go find a hundred different websites where I can pay with a normal credit card or bank account number to watch videos of people pissing and shitting on each other, stuffing bed posts or larger into every bodily orifice a human has, man on man, woman on woman, trans galore, dressed as animals, doesn't matter. It's on platforms specifically meant for such content, they have to keep records proving the people depicted are 18 and consenting to what was filmed, and they have to pay the CC Bill tax, but none of this requires self-hosting or crypto or bulletproof domain registrars. Tbey're all .com sites not being DNS-blocked, discoverable on Google. What is it people actually want? If you want to be able to create anything whatsoever legal and get paid to sell it, you can do that. If you want it to be as easy and controversy and bureacracy free as putting today's stock prices and last night's sports scores on a public ticker screen in Times Square where ten million eyeballs a day can see it without specifically asking for it, sorry, I don't think that's happening. > — [nonameiguess on hackernews · 2 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50230755) > I think this is one of the consequences of the social media shift from “follow the people you like and we’ll give you a feed of them” to “we’ll programmatically determine what you, specifically, would most likely enjoy.” When you are mostly just shown content that you’ve agreed to see, there’s less of an issue when you see something that offends your particular sensibilities, values, etc. because you agreed to see it, or you went looking for it. But when the potential content you’ll see can include literally anything, there is a real incentive for the platform to make that content as neutral as possible. Because if you’re shown something that you really don’t like, you’ll stop scrolling and the engagement stats will go down. > — [keiferski on hackernews · 3 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50230022) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229599) · 90 points · 149 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [\(comic\) The courage to question](https://daily.dev/posts/comic-the-courage-to-question-g59ovliyo) · Work Chronicles · 41 upvotes · 3 comments - [Eerie and “Inspector Dangerfuck”: ANSI art and webcomics, Part 3](https://daily.dev/posts/eerie-and-inspector-dangerfuck-ansi-art-and-webcomics-part-3-xc6fwhayv) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Banned on X and Reddit: An Indie Hacker Rant](https://daily.dev/posts/banned-on-x-and-reddit-an-indie-hacker-rant-vqddddbwf) · Alex CloudStar · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [xkcd: Juice](https://daily.dev/posts/xkcd-juice-28pcnhz3z) · xkcd · 4 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/online-censorship-is-crushing-indie-webcomics-agfkdcznf) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Online censorship is crushing indie webcomics","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/online-censorship-is-crushing-indie-webcomics-agfkdcznf","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/online-censorship-is-crushing-indie-webcomics-agfkdcznf"},"datePublished":"2026-10-25T12:28:42.098Z","dateModified":"2026-10-25T14:44:30.085Z","description":"New restrictions from social media platforms and payment processors are making it harder for indie webcomic artists to share queer stories online. Webcomic...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/6c76c781d7bfb6f02f81f53e98bbabd6?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/6c76c781d7bfb6f02f81f53e98bbabd6?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/online-censorship-is-crushing-indie-webcomics-agfkdcznf","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"","timeRequired":"PT1M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Online censorship is crushing indie webcomics"}]} ```