Whatever changes are coming to OnlyFans, this week spelled potential disaster for the many queer and trans sex workers who have come to rely on the platform for income.
On Thursday, the subscription-based content service shocked the internet by “banning porn,” as several headlines phrased it, beginning on October 1. The move marks a stunning about-face for a company that grew rapidly after its 2016 launch due to its wealth of independently created adult content, much of it made by LGBTQ+ creators.
A Bloomberg report kicked off the online chaos Thursday, claiming that OnlyFans would soon begin prohibiting “sexually explicit conduct,” which left creators wondering what, exactly, fell under that label. The company later shared a statement with Input that’s worth reading in full to show how confusing their communication has been:
This statement sent shockwaves through sex worker communities — and rightly so, because they built the site to a billion-dollar valuation in the first place. But it is especially alarming for LGBTQ+ creators, many of whom depend on their OnlyFans earnings.
What made this already vague statement even more confusing were the conflicting messages OnlyFans support staff sent in the panicked aftermath of the Bloomberg report. At first, creators who messaged support were reportedly told “not to believe untrustworthy sources of information” and that if any major changes were planned, the platform “would have informed you upfront.”
But overnight, the messages changed to be far less committal. Trans porn creator Blair Glass posted the newly standardized response she received to Twitter on Friday, which instructed her to “follow the official OnlyFans sources” for future updates.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
(As an OnlyFans creator myself, I messaged support today asking for clarity. I received a confusing message stating that the OnlyFans.com website would “continue and will always allow explicit content.” However, the support message also stated that the company is planning to release an app in October 2021 which “will not allow explicit content” in order to comply with Apple policies. So who even knows anymore?)
The answer about whether OnlyFans is indeed banning porn may depend on how “nudity” and “sexually explicit” are going to be defined. Some have speculated online that site administrators will merely be cracking down on content that already violates the existing Acceptable Use Policy. But the full statement provided to Input seems to assert that some kind of changes are, in fact, coming to the terms of service and creators will just have to “wait and see,” as Glass put it.
For many LGBTQ+ people, that is an uncertainty we can ill afford. As a creator myself, I am distressed and disappointed by this week’s developments. Although my page isn’t my primary source of income, it does pay a portion of my bills — and I know many LGBTQ+ sex workers who do rely on the site for their survival.
OnlyFans’ success was in many ways a perfect storm. The platform gained momentum at the precise moment Tumblr banned adult content, the COVID-19 pandemic only stoked its popularity, and the site’s easy storage of payment information made it simple for anyone to subscribe to as many creators as they liked with a few taps.
It seems unlikely that, should OnlyFans eventually abandon adult content altogether, another site will manage to fill its idiosyncratic role anytime soon. And even if OnlyFans were to restrict NSFW content to its site and keep the new app squeaky clean, that still wouldn’t bode well for sex workers trying to maintain their revenue stream.
But ultimately, this isn’t really OnlyFans’ fault — or at least, it’s a decision the platform is under pressure to make. Earlier this year, MasterCard announced it would make major changes to its rules for adult content merchants, following up on their decision last year — along with Visa — to ban cardholders from conducting transactions on Pornhub. Mastercard’s new rules take effect on October 15, which helps explain the reported October 1 deadline, as Bloomberg noted.
Indeed, this isn’t a problem specific to OnlyFans, but rather a symptom of a broader crackdown that has sent other platforms — Tumblr included — running from adult content, punishing LGBTQ+ creators in the process.
“OnlyFans deplatforming legal sex work is a perfect example of why we need an internet with less choke-points for censorship,” Lia Holland, campaigns and communications director at the digital rights nonprofit Fight for the Future, said in an emailed statement to them. “No corporation should be able to arbitrarily decide where and how we are able to spend our money, but that’s exactly what’s happening here.”
It’s also critical to remember that Mastercard and other financial institutions were themselves pressured into action by a number of “anti-trafficking” organizations with dubious goals. Barely a week before Visa and Mastercard dropped Pornhub last year, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof — a writer with a history of reporting misinformation about sex work and trafficking — published an opinion piece called “The Children of Pornhub” which approvingly cited activist Laila Mickelwait, currently the “director of abolition” at Exodus Cry, a Christian organization that pushes “the power of prayer” as key to ending human trafficking.
Where does all this leave sex workers? In the lurch, mostly. Some working in the adult content space have advocated for the use of cryptocurrency to avoid payment processing restrictions, but Bitcoin and other digital currencies are having devastating effects on the environment. And yet there’s increasingly no room for our work to be done through traditional payment platforms thanks to fundamentalists, misinformation, and the complicity of elected officials via laws like SESTA/FOSTA.
There’s a war on porn raging, and marginalized survival sex workers are being hit first — and worst. If you love erotic content and the people who make it, now is the time to organize before the internet becomes even blander and more sterile than it has already become.
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