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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
That's not the investors they are interested in. They are interested in big investments by banks which are not always super ok with some illegal stuff. It's the big investors who are causing the trouble.