OnlyFans will ban sexually explicit content from October – the news is financially and emotionally devastating for people who rely on it
Connor Evens made £2,500 per month on OnlyFans, but for the 20-year-old Brit, the platform offered so much more than simply a place to get paid. It was also an emotional lifeline.
“The community, it’s brought together, regardless of sex, sexuality or race,” he told JOE, following news Thursday that the platform will stop hosting sexually explicit content from October. “The gay community has been incredible to me and I’ll be forever grateful.”
“This whole situation is a mess,” he continues. “I’m going to struggle to pay for bills as OF (OnlyFans) is a big part of my income and something I’ve worked up towards, I feel back stabbed to be honest.”
OnlyFans made its owners rich and became a household name, by trading in amateur porn. The platform has 120 million subscribers who pay monthly fees to content creators. OF takes 20% of every payment.
Performer James* thinks the amateur online porn community will soon find a new place to entertain. “A strong community is never destroyed by a platform disappearing,” he says. “The community should be able to adapt and easily find another platform.”
Since the news broke, social media sites have been overrun with creators expressing shock. Some, like @dreamboytristan, have put up polls to see where their followers would like to see their content posted instead. Others are encouraging sex workers to unionise to fight the ban.
“I was shocked as most of platform’s income comes from sex workers – it’s actually insane how they are stopping it,” Connor told JOE.
“I don’t think they understand the importance of us to their platform, we are talking about millions of jobs being lost. I feel they will regret the decision when they find out how much their profits will decline. Most of us felt betrayed and upset.”
In the meantime, thousands of Brit creators are awaiting the specific details of the pan, fearing the devil will be in the details.
“Nothing’s gonna change too much for a little while,” believes Ava Caradonna, another sex worker who’s based in the UK. She believes OnlyFans bosses will “just be seen to be doing the bare minimum of kicking some people off” until October.
Finding cash flow is an obvious priority for the platform’s users, who have differing opinions over what’s next.
Following news that OnlyFans payment partner Mastercard pressurised it to have porn blocked, one option is that amateur porn may move to underground sites which take payment in cryptocurrency. Porn platform RocketStars, a subsidiary of PocketStars which sells itself on offering the types of hardcore kink that’s banned by OnlyFans such as porn involving urine and defecation, takes payments by cryptocurrency after Mastercard recently refused to back them, says Ava.
“They take crypto payment because there’s no one monitoring that, there’s no policies against that,” says Ava.
However, crypto destinations such as the Dark Web have their own difficulties which may damage the reputation of the amateur porn industry built by OnlyFans. Dark Web destinations have notorious problems with trading in illegal underage porn.
OnlyFans recently got in trouble when the BBC revealed underage material has been shared on the website. In their investigation, the BBC suggests that the platform’s explicit content ban was announced “after BBC News approached the company for its response to… concerns about its handling of accounts posting illegal content.”
For now, OnlyFans users can carry on posting as normal, as well as taking subscription fees, but Connor says he’s heard other platforms are already being set up. “It’s frustrating because some of us have got thousands and even millions of followers that we have built on OF for it to go away. Hopefully brighter days are coming.”
For Ava, who’s a member of the United Voices of the World sex worker union, the answer is simple: unionise. “People need to join the sex worker union so that we can take a collective action against the companies that discriminate against us with as many workers as possible,” she says.
“Like an orgy, it only works if there are lots of us!”
For James*, there’s no rush to make any drastic plans just yet. “I will only know what I want to do in the next two weeks,” he says.
“I may continue using the platform, or I may have to move somewhere else. I have only just started OnlyFans, and it is my major source of funding for university.”
Related links:
OnlyFans to ban sexually explicit content in just a few weeks
Sex workers devastated over OnlyFans ban on explicit content
