OnlyFans changes its mind, it will not ban explicit content

UPDATE 25.08.21: After the news a few days ago and the related controversies, OnlyFans has already backtracked. Through its Twitter account, the site has in fact announced that it no longer wants to ban explicit content in order to provide constant support to its community of creators. "OnlyFans is synonymous with inclusion and we will continue to provide a home to all creators" reads the release, which will be followed shortly by an official communication sent to the content creators active on the platform.

The decision comes following the multitude of negative feedbacks rained on OnlyFans after communicating their choice. Many had also threatened to be ready to abandon the platform in favor of Fansly, capable in the last two days of registering about 4,000 new users per hour with continuous crashes of the official website due to high traffic.

08.20.21: OnlyFans has announced, in a resounding step back, that starting this October it will ban the publication of sexually explicit content on its platform. The move is motivated by the search for new investors, which has encountered numerous obstacles precisely because of the pornographic nature of many of the content published on the platform. As illustrated by Dan Primack of Axios, in fact, many private investment funds cannot invest in projects that concern adult content under the terms of their partnership agreements while the concern about the potential presence of underage profiles and the association of the platform with sex work appear an obstacle to the acquisition of new partners and investors. This new policy, however, has aroused protests from explicit content creators as well as subscribers as OnlyFans has experienced incredible success in recent years precisely because it has represented a safe space where sex work was de-stigmatized and made less dangerous.

A conflict of values

As Axios points out in its analysis, based on OnlyFans' financial data, «any other company with growth like OnlyFans would be able to raise big money in a matter of minutes». Yet this was not the case, despite analysts' projections indicating a net revenue of 1.2 billion dollars in 2021 that would grow to 2.5 billion in 2022. Yet in the field of investment the issue of reputation still seems to be something central. But it is from the point of view of the public that the issue does not return: in addition to becoming one of the most important phenomena of digital culture in recent years, in fact, OnlyFans had always been highly appreciated for having normalized the work of sex workers, giving them a stable and legal source of income, while offering independent artists and newspapers the opportunity to expand the scope of editorial content by making them more explicit,  as for example nss magazine did with its Digital Cover N.05, entitled BODY and originally published on OnlyFans. The decision to ban sexually explicit content, therefore, appeared as a betrayal to many users who, as a Twitter user pointed out, «are not on there to see cooking & infomercials».

However, there remains an important note to make: in its statement a few days ago, in fact, the company said that while the «sexually explicit content» would have been banned, creators could have continued to post photos containing nudity – an ambiguous statement but one that probably wants to establish a distinction between the simple erotic photos that many of the creators post and the more clearly pornographic content depicting actual sexual acts. Although the "softest" NSFW content could remain, therefore, the risk of replicating the effects of Tumblr's 2018 porn ban remains, which led the platform to lose almost a third of its users in a matter of months. However, it must be said that in the last year the OnlyFans platform had been increasingly "gentrifying" welcoming various stars and celebrities who perhaps publish very suggestive content at most but never really explicit or even completely different and safe-for-work such as backstage videos, cooking and aerobics lessons or special messages for fans. It is no coincidence that the platform's Instagram account has now become more of a showcase dedicated to creators such as DJs, chefs, personal trainers and influencers who praise the inclusiveness and positivity of OnlyFans - an operation that suggests a sort of soft rebranding of the app.

The consequences of the ban

The risk that OnlyFans runs now is therefore to lose popularity – a high risk considering how in recent years similar platforms such as JustForFans, Unlockd and AdultNode have appeared to which many of the most explicit content creators could now head en masse. Without mentioning how sex work was the area from which OnlyFans started, now the platform could risk becoming a channel through which influencers and various celebrities speculate directly on the curiosity of their fans - a kind of paid Instagram. The cultural change that OnlyFans has triggered, in fact, has gone beyond OnlyFans itself, has changed the way in which the public consumes explicit content online and has created an entire economic ecosystem too structured not to withstand the ban. Rather, as TechCrunch speculated, this ban could represent a great opportunity to introduce cryptocurrencies into the porn industry. 

PornHub, for example, was the first in 2018 to accept cryptocurrency payments for its premium services – a type of payment that has become mandatory now that Visa and MasterCard said goodbye to the platform last year. In the meantime, some ad hoc cryptocurrencies have been created but without too much success, and that is precisely why, without the competition of OnlyFans, a new space could be created in the market ready to be conquered by those who will understand how to simplify and make cryptocurrency payments safer. Just as the presence of OnlyFans normalized sex work in 2016, today its absence could normalize a wider acceptance of cryptocurrency in mainstream digital culture.