How to Protect Yourself Online as an NSFW Creator

In 2025, with greater internet access than ever before, our freedom to view and post adult content for adult audiences has never been more restricted. This year alone, the United Kingdom's Online Safety Act has crippled social media access for UK residents under sweeping reforms that require you to upload sensitive ID documents to view anything from porn to potentially adult tweets. Game studios have been forced off major platforms like Steam and Itch.io, losing valuable income and depriving their audience. And for NSFW artists — a time-honored art form that traces eroticism and nudity throughout literal centuries — getting paid for our work can be a frustrating minefield.

When I created Sheepish Dreams, I had two goals in mind. Firstly, I wanted to provide regular coverage of my favorite NSFW artists, away from social media networks and their opaque algorithms. And secondly, I wanted the safety and security of "old school" hosting — where I don't need to fear the shifting whims of conservative American credit card processors.

Today on Sheepish Dreams, I'm leading you through everything you need to know as an NSFW creator — and how you can leap into the past to protect yourself from the instability of our present and future.

Part 1: With Great Power Comes Great Oppression

Many of us over 25 remember social media as a lawless land of free expression, where Reddit and Twitter were places to connect in a loosely defined environment. Younger users have known nothing except social media, warts and all. But in the past 1-2 years, coinciding with the sharp rise in conservatism from far-right parties in the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, and even my home country of Australia. 

These conservative policies seek to clamp down on free expression, thinly veiled under the guise of "protecting children," while actually harming those children in the process. Studies have raised concerns about children being used as the "crowbar" to justify censorship (E. Staksrud, K. Olafsson, T. Milosevic, "Justifying censorship on the grounds of child protection"), and shown that a personal sense of moral sanctity underlies censorship choices (R. Anderson and E. J. Masicampo, "Protecting the Innocence of Youth: Moral Sanctity Values Underlie Censorship From Young Children"). Unsurprisingly, increased anti-LBGTQ+ policies and censorship have been linked to increased harm to those communities.

NSFW content is simply the latest target in the crosshairs of conservative politicians and lawmakers who tout moral sanctity while standing on a mountain of their own sordid misdeeds.  

Part 2: Becoming Your Own Lawyer

We can't change the world on our own. It's enough for regular folk to take care of themselves and their communities — and if you can't protect yourself, how can you protect anybody else? To that end, NSFW artists and creators need to understand how and where they can share their content without facing account terminations or fund seizures. 

Social media companies and governments run laps around their userbase with legalese that's utterly incomprehensible to the layman. But there are only a few steps you need to learn to navigate this confusing world.

When you're looking at a social media company or a website:

1. Look for their Terms of Use document — also called an Acceptable Use Policy or sometimes the Community Guidelines — buried somewhere in the terms and conditions. All major websites that accept user-uploaded content will have one. 
2. Once you've found this page/document, search for the keyword "adult" — you're looking to see if they specifically restrict adult content.

Let's see this in action.

Using Meta's Instagram as an example, we've navigated to the Terms of Use page. There's nothing here about what we can't upload, but we do find this: "You can't violate (or help or encourage others to violate)  these Terms or our policies, including in particular the Community Standards."

Following the link to the Community Standards, we find what we're looking for. Meta has subdivided everything, but searching for "Adult" gives us the Adult Nudity and Sexual Activity page. Here, we find Meta's dos and don'ts for adult content on their platform, which predictably bans everything related to human nudity and sexual depictions. But that's no surprise — everyone knows that Instagram won't allow adult content.

How about another example? When setting up Sheepish Dreams, I wondered whether Substack would be a good fit. After all, it offers newsletter and subscription features that make it perfect for my use case.

Let's repeat our steps. First, we find Substack's Terms of Use, and we see the Content Guidelines. There's no hit for "adult," but we do get a hit from "nudity" (which is an excellent second choice). And there's the kicker — Substack has a blanket ban on sexually gratifying material, which, you guessed it, neatly covers everything from real-world porn to NSFW illustrations.

Finally, let's return to the infamous elephant in the room: PayPal. PayPal's User Agreement links directly to its Acceptable Use Policy, where we find a blanket ban on "Mature Audience Content," along with separate references to "sexually oriented materials or services."

Part 3: Stop Depending On Platform Services

So now you know what you're trying to avoid, but how can you find a platform that works? Firstly, we need to back up a step and identify the common thread between all the platforms and services we've just listed. All of them fall under "Platform-as-a-Service" or "PaaS" to use product vernacular (technically, PayPal is both SaaS and PaaS software, but we'll lump it in with the others for the sake of this discussion).

These types of companies will always have the strictest guidelines, as they want to maximize the number of users on their website by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Alienating a few thousand NSFW creators is worth attracting a hundred thousand soccer moms or local politicians; after all, they're trying to increase their profits through taking subscription or payment fees. And if they're not directly taking money, as with companies like Meta, they're profiteering by selling ad space — and advertising agencies want their products to appear in specific environments. Coca-Cola wouldn't choose to advertise next to a strip club; they don't want to run the risk that their ad could appear next to your NSFW illustration. 

For artists and "regular" users, the appeal of these platforms is their zero-cost entry. We pay nothing to use Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or PayPal. Tristan Harris, former Google design ethicist, sums it up nicely with the well-known adage: "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product." By engaging with a free platform, users inherently sacrifice freedoms — we are paying for nothing, and have nothing to demand in return. Corporations allowed us to build entire livelihoods on their platforms. They actively encouraged it through the explosive growth of YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, enabling regular people to earn real income from their own content. But when pressure is applied from politicians or banks, these companies quickly fold, because they know there's always someone else hungrier, more desperate, and more willing to bend over backwards for a few dollars.

The solution, then, requires us to go back in time, before Facebook and MySpace, before free accounts on every website, to a time when putting your content online required owning your own little slice of the internet. It's time to return to hosting.

Part 4: Hosting Your Own Content

For the uninitiated, hosting is having your own website or space on the internet, where you can upload files, manage your own content, and do almost anything you want. From a simple blog to a full-blown eCommerce store, hosting is your spot on the web. You'll pay for the privilege — even the cheapest hosting could still set you back US$50 a year — but remember what we said above? Paying for the product gives you more leverage.

We say more leverage, because there's a catch. Hosting your own content is intimidating, particularly for people who are only used to signing up with their email and being immediately given an entire social media platform, all ready to go. By contrast, once you've gotten your own server, you'll have nothing but potential — a sliver of hard drive space on a mainframe somewhere halfway across the world. 

WordPress and Wix, two popular website builders, have recognized that apprehension and seized the market, offering their own hosting along with customizable websites. Unfortunately, these are just another Platform in disguise, as the WordPress User Guidelines outright ban sexual material. Wix does not currently ban sexually explicit material, but content guidelines change at the whim of their owners, so your mileage may vary.

Thankfully, most pure server hosting companies offer easy, single-click solutions to get your own copy of WordPress up and running with your little slice of the internet. Companies like Hostinger have common-sense terms of service. Sheepish Dreams is hosted on MagicPages, using GhostCMS instead of WordPress. If you're more technically minded, you could even create and host a website with Amazon Lightsail, whose Acceptable Use Policy is incredibly short.

As we mentioned above, you'll be paying for all of these services — but in return, you get the freedom to host your own content, your own way.

Part 5: The Reality

We're not oblivious to the fact that hosting your own content isn't the perfect solution. Social media is how most of us network and grow. In the past decade, the entire internet has grown around the structures of social media, to the point where we make purchases within apps like Instagram. 

NSFW artists face unique challenges. Not only does sharing our content require navigating a gauntlet of censorship and nebulous policies, but monetizing it can be a nightmare as well. My guest piece, PayPal Alternatives for NSFW Creators, covers the different ways you can still make money for your adult content. Solutions like Ghost (what you're looking at right now) let you offer subscription services like Patreon, but getting users to your website is a challenge unto itself (and a topic for another day).

Still, if you're afraid that the circle is closing around you and that you have fewer places to post your content online, know that it's not hopeless. Look beyond the social media that have cancerously taken over the internet. Consider whether self-hosting your own content is the right choice for you. Understand what to look for when signing up for a new platform, and learn how to "play the game" by posting engaging content that follows the rules but also grows your overall brand. 

As an artist, you're not just a creative, but a business, with a brand and a product. Just like these platforms, you have to protect your own interests — and don't allow yourself to be a product being sold.