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OnlyFans is getting out of the pornography business.
The company will prohibit users from posting any sexually explicit conduct, starting in October. Creators will still be allowed to post nude photos and videos, provided they’re consistent with OnlyFans’ policy, the company said Thursday.
The changes are needed because of mounting pressure from banking partners and payment providers, according to the company.
“In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of our platform, and the continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines,” OnlyFans said.
OnlyFans has attracted more than 130 million users by giving online creators a platform to charge their fans for photos and videos. Many of its most-popular creators post nude photos and videos, and it has been praised for giving sex workers a safer place to do their jobs.
But sex work still has a stigma. And OnlyFans is trying to raise money from outside investors at a valuation of more than $1 billion. The company handled more than $2 billion in sales last year, and is on pace to more than double that this year. It keeps 20% of that figure.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-19/onlyfans-to-block-sexually-explicit-videos-starting-in-october
Another blow to sex workers and adult content creators. They have virtually zero labor rights in this country and many of them rely on this for their main source of income.
Edit here is an updated statement from OnlyFans
Effective 1 October, 2021, OnlyFans will prohibit the posting of any content containing sexually-explicit conduct. In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of the platform, and to continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines. Creators will continue to be allowed to post content containing nudity as long as it is consistent with our Acceptable Use Policy. These changes are to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers. We will be sharing more details in the coming days, and we will actively support and guide our creators through this change in content guidelines.
https://www.inputmag.com/tech/onlyfans-is-banning-porn-the-very-thing-that-made-it-big
Final edit: It looks all of this does indeed stem from a lot stricter guidelines being imposed by Mastercard, which investors and adult content industry professionals believe will be followed by other large credit institutions. This site wrote a good write up of the new requirements being imposed by MC. https://www.xbiz.com/news/258606/heres-what-the-new-mastercard-rules-mean-for-adult-sites-producers
It reads like bad news for a lot of people with their extremely arbitrary use of "sexually-explicit content" which I'm taking as actual porn as opposed to lewd or "art" type photography. What I think is key in most of this is the requirement that every piece of media uploaded needs to be reviewed and approved before its public. This might actually be very unprofitable change for sites like OF but much easier for professional porn sites that basically already do this now and have all records of the performers on file already. That's my guess though but a lot of this is very wordy and things are going to definitely change in some ways for smaller content creators
I mean, OnlyFans is pretty much a sex work only platform, I'm saying it would be stupid if they banned it so I don't think that's what they are doing at all.
When was the last time a platform which almost exclusively hosts and promotes sexual content just banned it practically overnight? They'll just fail if they do that, I don't think they have a death wish, I think they will try to pivot to somewhat "cleaner" content to go more mainstream. Maybe in the future they want to pivot to SFW content only but it's not gonna happen in two months.
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Neither was relying primarily on sexual content, Tumblr had plenty of other stuff going on and Patreon was the go to for youtubers.
PornHub, much like what OF will probably do, never banned NSFW content (obviously, it's called PORNhub after all...).
More difficult yes, but there is no way they'll just get rid off basically their only source of growth and revenue in 2 months.
And this is one more reason why they wouldn't do it, Patreon already fills the niche they could have tried to attack.
Estimates from the owner of graphtreon — a third party website that tracks Patreon user’s growth — said that 40% of patreon’s income came from NSFW pages.
If that’s not ‘relying’ on SW it’s pretty damn close.
Also: you claim that patreon / tumblr didn’t ban 100% of adult content. Maybe not, the the point is the ongoing harassment campaign / demeaning of sex workers.
No, I didn't really say that, I said that they could just do it and still survive or do better, because they already had a lot of other content, unlike OnlyFans which has almost exclusively NSFW. Like, Tumblr had a choice between banning porn or saying goodbye to the app store. The second would hurt them more. In OnlyFans' case, they'd just lose close to all their revenue if they just did that.
The point is the ongoing harassment campaign / demeaning of sex workers.
Yeah, that was tumblr’s reason for banning all NSFW content. To me, the excuses matter very little. There’s always some wedge the capitalist can use to justify their misdeeds. And banning all pornography was a serious misdeed.
In the case of Tumblr it was pretty minor compared to Patreon really...
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It really doesn't matter what stance anyone takes because it's not gonna make any difference. Legislation is a different thing and much more meaningful.
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I'm not sure how I am defending OF, I'm saying they're not gonna instantly destroy themselves like that. I'm saying what I think they're gonna do.
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