The BBC was just about to release a long-researched exposé about all the moderation issues they have and how child porn and abuse were going unchecked on their platform. This was a supposed to be a huge deal that could destroy them if the media at large rallied around that story like they did with Pornhub. By making this announcement before it came out they stole the narrative and switched the focus away from that problem and towards the issue of what are all the sex workers going to do when they suddenly lose their income and also just how crazy the announcement was in of itself.
They did it with perfect timing and drummed up such a fuss with such a wild and seemingly out of nowhere change that when that article actually dropped, it was merely background noise and not the primary focus of media coverage. The media likes to hyper-focus on issues for a short period of time (with a few exceptions, trump/covid/amazon being a few) and then quickly move on regardless of whether the issue/story has finished or resolved itself in anyway. Which is what will likely happen here, OnlyFans will likely make it through this mostly unscathed and with a ton of publicity.
OF we’re in the potential firing line so they rallied their user base and created a strong narrative.
They can now say that they tried to limit porn but too many vulnerable people would suffer as a result.
It’s a brilliant maneuver if this is what happened.
Source?
This is the kind of article that tries to dish up dozens of random allegations, intermixing them in strange ways, hoping that what sticks with the reader is a general sense of wrong-doing.
Among other things, it tries to imply that Only Fans somehow allows "big" accounts to post child porn multiple times with a warning, including by misusing the world "illegal". In reality, and pending evidence to the contrary, it is instead reasonable to assume that Only Fans will let people get away with a warning for a terms of service violation, which is entirely a different thing.
Literally the first paragraph is the smoking gun:
> Internal documents, leaked to BBC News, reveal that OnlyFans allows moderators to give multiple warnings to accounts that post illegal content on its online platform before deciding to close them.
I.e., they literally allowed their users to post illegal stuff (apparently including CSAM, according to the guy from US Homeland Security they quote?) and keep making money, rather than reporting such cases. The rest is secondary. BBC editors are actually usually good at applying the inverted pyramid principle.
So I am not seeing anything to support your claim that:
> they literally allowed their users to post illegal stuff (apparently including CSAM, according to the guy from US Homeland Security they quote)
The homeland security agent also does not appear to ever say that onlyfans intentionally allows such content. It seems his only contribution to the article is the observation that a large volume of CSAM he sees on other sites appear to originate on onlyfans. This is the entire section of the article which mentions him.
> Special agent Austin Berrier, from US Homeland Security, specialises in investigating child exploitation online. He estimates he finds between 20-30 child abuse images a week which he says have clearly originated on OnlyFans. He says every internet forum he has visited as part of his investigations in the past six months or so, has included child abuse images from OnlyFans. Most of them are videos that were live streamed on the site. In some of them, children are receiving direction - he says.
> "It's out there, it's all over the place and it's being widely traded."
The three strikes policy creates a vehicle of exploitation. First two strikes an abuser posts something illegal OF doesn’t ban or report them, and in fact helpfully lets them know. Subsequently, in future uploads, they obscure any observable illegality to not trigger moderation, but their followers (which they didn’t lose, because they didn’t get banned) know what they’re really about and together with OF enable the abuser to keep making money.
Sounds like they requested a new deal in exchange for not naming them.
[0] https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...
This would explain why Pornhub, etc. lost their payment processing but OnlyFans feels confident they won't.
I don't think the cards companies particularly want regulators taking a much closer look at where they're making their money.
Is there any evidence that this played any significant part or is it just a conspiracy theory? The CEO said:
>“The change in policy, we had no choice — the short answer is banks,”
>Stokely claimed OnlyFans had been unfairly targeted by media reports into “incidents of illegal content” that failed to mention how porn-free social media platforms grapple with similar issues. “Banks read the same media as everyone else,” he said.
>Stokely said he would “absolutely” welcome porn back were the banking environment to change.
If you really don't want to read them, maybe read the short Wikipedia excerpt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_Cry#Traffickinghub_camp...
Edit: Also even for PornHub, it is alleged that Nicholas Kristof's actions [1] had an important impact on the decisions surrounding PornHub, and Kristof is a self-described progressive who doesn't seem to act on religious grounds, so I don't really see sufficient evidence that religious groups play a significant role at all.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Kristof#Child_pornogr...
The NyTimes link below is opinion but it lays out facts and puts in the context of OF decision. It talks about the original nytimes PornHub op-ed by Kristof and his connections to anti-sex religious groups.
I think the rhetoric these groups use is very similar to the CP-as-an-excuse, but their goal ism't simply to remove illegal content (which everyone agrees is bad). It's to curb porn and sex work in general.
https://newrepublic.com/article/160488/nick-kristof-holy-war... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/opinion/onlyfans-porn-sex...
Tho, as we’ve seen in the past, network effect will likely play a huge part in most of the content creators staying with OF. However I just can’t imagine the feeling of safety/permanence in platform choice will return for most of them.
>“We’re already fully compliant with the new Mastercard rules, so that had no bearing on the decision,” he said.
https://www.ft.com/content/7b8ce71c-a87a-440e-9f3d-58069ca04...
> “We’re already fully compliant with the new Mastercard rules, so that had no bearing on the decision,”
Reading between the lines, that could easily mean "We're already fully compliant with MC's rules but they still won't let the banks do business with us, so we needed to put publish pressure on MC"
tldr: Financial transactions for porn suffer VERY high cashback rates so traditional payment operators do NOT like them because they become expensive to them VERY quickly.
I’m sure OF will be fine, I just hope they feel it a bit because this has to have shaken the foundations for a lot people who relied on them.
Chaturbate has existed for time, existed through this; was the OnlyFans before OnlyFans, and continues to seem to thrive. Simple answer.
Watching people fall for their marketing is like being in a state of depression with the human race.
This is like threatening to raise taxes to attract corporations.
OnlyFans will still be good money and still be able to attract new people willing to take their clothes off and cash in.
Youtube content discovery is mostly through the algorithm. For OnlyFans, it seems to be mostly through outside promotion. If your ability find new members is all on you, I doubt it matters, as much, where you go.
It actually reminds me of Ebay. Ebay became big with online auctions but as soon as they did they seemed to want to no longer be in the auction business. Instead they wanted to be in the online retail business. Maybe because there was more money per customer. Maybe because online retail was larger. Personally I always found Ebay's retail move to be weird and off-brand with a subpar user experience.
Something about this Onlyfans move just doesn't sit right. Like who were the banks or payment processors that supposedly forced this? I haven't seen anyone claim responsibility (officially or not).