The suits with the money have scared OnlyFans out of the explicit pornography business, as the platform seeks outside investment.
Variety:
OnlyFans, which has amassed a base of more than 130 million users largely for adult-oriented subscription fan pages, announced that it will ban sexually explicit content this fall.
The U.K.-based company said it is making the changes “to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers,” in a statement provided to Variety.
Effective Oct. 1, 2021, “OnlyFans will prohibit the posting of any content containing sexually explicit conduct,” the company said in a statement. “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.”
According to OnlyFans, creators will continue to be allowed to post content containing nudity “as long as it is consistent with our Acceptable Use Policy.” The site’s terms currently allow nudity except in the case of content featuring public nudity recorded in or broadcast from a jurisdiction where public nudity is illegal.
“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,” the company said. “OnlyFans remains committed to the highest levels of safety and content moderation of any social platform. All creators are verified prior to being able to upload any content to OnlyFans, and all uploaded content is checked by automated systems and human moderators.”
OnlyFans earlier this week officially launched OFTV, a free streaming service that will not include any sexually explicit material. OFTV features original content from more than 100 OnlyFans creators, spanning fitness, cooking, comedy, health, music and more. OnlyFans earlier this year soft-launched the on-demand streaming service, which now features a content library of over 800 videos.
Founded in 2016, OnlyFans says it has paid out more than $5 billion to creators worldwide. According to its terms, the company keeps 20% of revenue generated by its 2 million-plus creators. Because it has been a home to X-rated content, OnlyFans is available only on the web, not on mobile app platforms including iOS and Android.
so 2 million creators.
Banning pornography will leave maybe a hundred thousand and even then they are going to spend a lot of time policing content.
Doesn’t seem like good business to me . . .Report
In the 80’s and 90’s, cops would complain about busting drug dealers saying something like “we’re just creating a job opening”.
So the biggest amateur porn site is going to stop doing porn?
Looks like they’re creating an opening for a new #1 site out there.Report
I mean, “it’s like Patreon but you can do porn” was literally the business model for OnlyFans!Report
The supply hasn’t gone down. The demand hasn’t gone down.
Merely the distributor.
Yeah. That’ll work.Report
Banking partners and payout providers? Ooookay?Report
I’m kind of interested on why the banking partners and payout providers decided to say no more porn. I’m guessing not wanting rivals to say something like the Bank of America funds porn is a big one.Report
Betamax argued that they were more family friendly than the VHS format.
“You can use the Discover card to buy porn!”
Is this an attack ad?
Or is it an ad for Discover?Report
This is the result of puritanical groups — aided and abetted by mainstream outlets like the NYT — successfully scaremongering.Report
Ok, so uh what exactly is Onlyfans business model now? Watching grannies make cookies? You’d think they’d have noticed what happened to Tumblr and Tumblr could have been anywhere near as dependent on porn as Onlyfans is.Report
Or Pornhub.Report
They want a smaller but more lucrative niche market.
Watching grannies make cookies is for only most discriminating fetish enthusiasts.Report
A lesser YouTube. Maybe what Veronica says about allowing for lonely men to have the illusion of intimacy with attractive woman by having them act as their naked or fan service dressed girlfriend, like an apron and nothing else, prance around and do cute girlfriend type stuff like bake cookies for their boyfriend, etc.Report
That exact thing is huge on Twitch, to the consternation of many gamer bros. However, OnlyFans allows nudity. On Twitch they have to be clothed.
Personally I think the porn aspect of OF is less important than the personal connections aspect. Porn is plentiful. A woman who will respond is not.Report
In related news, Hostess is switching to a low-fat-, low-calorie, no-sugar lineup of “fun treats” in order to attract investment from nutritionists.Report
To clarify, they still allow nudity, just not sex. Much of the of business model shouldn’t change much. You’ll still have attractive women posting nudes for fans, along with the illusion of a personal relationship.Report
The ban will be weaponized *instantly*.
On reddit, there’s a “reddit care resources” that’s basically just a bot to send messages to people who might be expressing suicidal tendencies, listing resources and places they can go to talk to someone or seek help.
Trolls spam it so heavily users have to BLOCK it or get two dozen messages a day because, I dunno, they had the wrong opinion about TF2 or something.Report
Hmmm I think you’re right. That distinction strikes me as encompassing all the difference. If anything it’ll actually help them a bit. “Oh no, I’m not a porn actress, I just have an innocent little onlyfans site.”Report
To clarify, they still allow nudity, just not sex.
Rumor has it that they’re planning to rebrand to OnlyFannies.Report
Isn’t that the business of Onlyfans?Report
Many of the online sort are calling this a stupid business decision but OnlyFans is basically following what the money people say to do. Usually, it is a very good idea for a business to do what the banks say.Report
Except it’s sort of like running a football franchise, and realizing you could cut your stadium costs to the bone if you just held the football game in an empty field at a undisclosed location each week.
Sure, your stadium wouldn’t have all that overhead, but why would people keep paying for tickets?
Then again, there’s so much wealth inequality that we have a massive glut of investment capital desperate for returns, so they probably CAN make more money burning VC investment than actually having people pay to use their site.Report
Ehh uhh Banks will tell you what will be good for the banks and what they -think- will help the business make their loan payments. Banks do not, however, have the intimate business understand about the businesses they lend to that the actual businesses have. So you can go bankrupt pretty easily following the banks advice. It’s just that the last thing you’ll do is default on your loan payments.Report
My sense is that trying to sell anything online without the payment processors on board is like trying to run a music tour without Ticketmaster or LiveNation. From the outside looking in, you would not think it as such a big deal, but effectively it is impossible.
From my limited understanding, there are technical problems and regulatory hurdles that make payment processing an ‘economies of scale’ business. You have to have an enormous back end and make only cents on the dollar for each transaction (kind of like… never mind).
Take the company Stripe for example. They came out of Y combinator. They have Thiel and Musk and Andressen Horowitz and Sequoia as their backers. And it has taken them a decade to reach a market penetration of less than 20%.Report
And if you’re asking why the payment processors care so much, it’s because you are failing to understand that the payment processors’ customers are the Federal Government. “I thought their customers were the users?” No, the users are the revenue source. The customer is the entity you design your business processes around satisfying, and for payment processors that is absolutely not the user.Report
An interesting wrinkle. Does this indicate pushback?
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Of friggin’ course.
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Okay. Looks like OF has changed course.
My question is… have the banks? The story doesn’t say.
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My bet, OF took that outcry to the banks and payment processors and asked, “What do you love more, money, or appearing puritanical?”.Report
They took a chart of what happened to Tumblr as a visual aidReport
I would make that bet as well… and I suppose I can understand why the banks didn’t want to say anything.Report
Yeah two options: their current banks folded, or they found new banks. It isn’t like there is a deficiency of financing options for businesses with strong positive cash flows.Report
They may have been able to convince the payment processors that, unlike Tumblr, they actually DID have some age and ID verification.
Tumblr, as best I can tell, literally didn’t care at all. They did the very bare minimum if someone reported something (they’d delete it and occasionally nuke AN account), but left the network of likes/reblogs/etc alone, so that anyone wanting sketchy content could use the actual deletion to find MORE CONTENT LIKE IT.
Tumblr ended up with a social media site that was a good portion porn, but they never planned for that, and when it happened never bothered planning for it, getting legally up to date, or doing anything at all. Heck, it’s back to half porn again because they still don’t care.
OnlyFans, at least, has an actual business model that requires them to care. They’re not surfing on ad money and VC — they have actual people producing content, and money going both ways they take a rake on, so they’re more heavily involved in the process.Report
Agreed. They’re actually an online business, not just a concept like Tumblr was.Report
More and more people are pointing out the word “suspends”.
So this can got kicked down the road, rather than picked up.Report