OnlyFans Says It Will Not Ban Adult Content In Shocking 180: BREAKING

GayNrd Editors August 25, 2021

In an email to creators on its platform, OnlyFans just announced that they would not, as previously announced, be moving away from adult content.

In the email sent Wednesday morning they wrote:

Dear OnlyFans Creator,

Our Acceptable Use Policy will remain the same and may be found at: https://onlyfans.com/terms

The proposed October 1, 2021 changes are no longer required due to banking partners’ assurances that OnlyFans can support all genres of creators.

OnlyFans is committed to providing a safe and dependable platform for all creators and their fans.

Thank you,
OnlyFans Team

It was only last Friday that the platform left the adult industry panic-stricken by its news that it would no longer be allowing “sexually explicit conduct.”

According to The Daily Beast: As the news spread across the internet, confusion and fear were met with misinformation and anger. Content creators immediately took to Twitter in hopes of finding answers or details about the upcoming changes beyond the headlines. Many pointed to a new report on Axios detailing how, despite swimming in cash, OnlyFans was struggling to find investors.

OnlyFans attempted damage-control with the following statement, first reportedby XBIZ’s Gustavo Turner:
“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.”

An open letter to MasterCard, published here on The Daily Beast, called into question the upcoming removal of consensual adult content. For those that missed it, back in April, MasterCard announced a policy change set to take effect on Oct. 15 requiring “the banks that connect merchants to our network… to certify that the seller of adult content has effective controls in place to monitor, block and, where necessary, take down all illegal content.”These “controls” include:

Documented age and identity verification for all people depicted and those uploading the content
Content review process prior to publication
Complaint resolution process that addresses illegal or nonconsensual content within seven business days
Appeals process allowing for any person depicted to request their content be removed

The decision left sex workers wondering how it would affect past content, and whether it was merely the first step toward banning payments for sex work entirely.

And MasterCard did not act alone. It was pressured into this decision by groups like Exodus Cry and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), both of which have waged years-long campaigns against sites like OnlyFans and Pornhub with the ultimate aim of abolishing the sex-work industry entirely.

Following the OnlyFans announcement, NCOSE did a victory lap, releasing a statement saying “the announcement made by OnlyFans that it will prohibit creators from posting material with sexually explicit conduct on its website comes after much advocacy from NCOSE, survivors and allies.”

You see, Exodus Cry and NCOSE have targeted these sites claiming that they’re hotbeds of child sexual abuse when, according to an independent study released earlier this year by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, MindGeek—the parent company of Pornhub, which also runs RedTube, YouPorn, and several other adult tube sites—accounted for 13,229 instances of what they deemed “child sexual abuse material,” while Snapchat had 144,095 instances, Google had 546,704, and Facebook topped everybody with 20.3 million.

OnlyFans recently released its first Transparency Report for the month of July, and claimed to have deactivated a total of 15 accounts for alleged child sexual abuse material.

So, if child sexual abuse is their primary concern, why aren’t Exodus Cry and NCOSE going after the Googles and Facebooks of the world? The answer is clear.

Three weeks after The Daily Beast published the open letter to MasterCard, on June 30, MasterCard executives met with the performer union the Adult Performance Artists Guild (APAG) to discuss concerns that platforms like OnlyFans would remove adult content due to MasterCard’s own policy changes set to take effect on Oct. 15. During that meeting, MasterCard stated it had no intention of having legal adult content removed from its clients’ platforms. We reached out to MasterCard for its response to the OnlyFans announcement but have not yet received a reply.