OnlyFans Reverses Ban On Adult Content, But The Damage Has Been Done
Image via ID 213502712 © Mykhailo Polenok | Dreamstime.com
Previously, OnlyFans dealt a heavy blow to adult content creators when it announced it would be banning explicit material from the platform. Starting October, the site would “prohibit the posting of any content containing sexually explicit content.”
Understandably, this news wasn’t welcomed by the site’s 130 million creators, most of whom use the platform to sell adult content. The new policy, which OnlyFans outlined earlier in the week, would see all content featuring “actual or simulated sexual intercourse” banned. Additionally, creators would have to remove past content that did not meet the guidelines by December 1, 2021.
Now, in one of the biggest and quickest public U-turns, OnlyFans has reversed its upcoming ban on explicit content. In a tweet on August 25, the company said: “We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change.”
The company had said that the decision to ban adult content from its platform was to comply with the requirements of its financial partners. However, it seems that it has now found a workaround, though it remains to be seen if the reversal is only temporary.
“The proposed October 1, 2021 changes are no longer required due to banking partners’ assurances that OnlyFans can support all genres of creators,” OnlyFans told Buzzfeed News.
Could the backlash have convinced OnlyFans and its financial partners that banning adult content—the genre that propelled the platform to fame in the first place—was a bad move? Considering the exodus of creators right after the new policy was announced, OnlyFans executives may have realized the ban was untenable.
A performer on the platform, xaddiebabyx, told Buzzfeed News she had “lost countless fans, which is money to put food on [the] table,” since the announcement last week.
“They were so quick to throw us to the curb when sex workers are the reason OnlyFans has the huge platform they have today. It made me laugh reading their post today, thinking we were all going to come back to them, even though they have only suspended the policy change,” she said.
Will this reversal be enough to lure the site’s millions of creators back to its platform? Or will adult content creators find another space to host their content without fear of a ban? It seems this saga is long from over.
[via Buzzfeed News, cover image via ID 213502712 © Mykhailo Polenok | Dreamstime.com]
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