Video sharing site OnlyFans, best known for its creators’ adult videos and photos, will prohibit sexually explicit content starting October 1st. First reported by Bloomberg, the corporate says it’s making the changes due to pressure from its banking and payment provider partners, though a BBC investigation found that the corporate had been lenient on creators who had posted illegal content.
“In order to make sure the long-term sustainability of our platform, and to still host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines,” OnlyFans said during a statement emailed to The Verge. Creators on the platform will still be allowed to post nude images as long as they suit the site’s acceptable use policy. More information is going to be available within the coming days, the corporate added: “OnlyFans remains committed to the very best levels of safety and content moderation of any social platform.
” However, consistent with the BBC, the site’s moderation hasn’t been up thereto standard. It reports that a “compliance manual” instructed employees to offer users three strikes, albeit the content that was being removed was illegal. The BBC also reports that more successful accounts, which had a bigger subscriber base, were handled by a separate team and given additional warnings once they broke the site’s rules.
OnlyFans claims quite 2 million creators — who it says have earned quite $5 billion on its platform — and 130 million users. Last year, the location generated $2 billion in sales (of which OnlyFans receives a 20 percent cut). The company is seeking investors at a valuation of quite $1 billion but has had difficulty attracting investors, consistent with a report from Axios, mainly due to the proliferation of porn on the location (Axios notes the corporate didn’t mention pornography in the least in its pitch deck to investors).
Despite its ability to draw eyeballs, and therefore the safer environment it provides sex workers, online porn maybe advertising for investors. Recall that as Verizon prepared to sell Tumblr to Automattic, the blogging site permanently banned adult content in 2018, a highly controversial move at the time. Along with the announcement about sexually explicit content, OnlyFans published its first monthly transparency report for July on Thursday, “as a part of our commitment to safety and transparency.”
