This didn't last very long. OnlyFans had announced its intention to ban porn on its platform a week ago, but the subscription site said Wednesday that it may have made a mistake. The company stated in a tweet that it had received assurances to support its diverse creator community and has suspended its policy change which was due to take effect on October 1.
Proposed changes would have been disastrous for sex workers who make up the majority of creators on the platform. Some were worried about their futures long-term on the site after the change-over. Trapcry, an artist and creator of adult content, said that workers still lost subscribers. They changed their minds not because of the sex workers but because they knew the backlash would be more costly in the end.
Many of OnlyFans' recent maneuvers have been centered on money. The company announced the porn ban on Monday, saying it was to appease its banking partners which included JPMorgan Chase and Bank of New York Mellon. In a follow up interview with Financial Times founder Tim Stokey, he said that Chase was especially aggressive in closing accounts of sex workers and any other business that supports them.
It seems that this has now been changed. WIRED was emailed Wednesday by the company to confirm that the ban on explicit content has been lifted due to assurances from banking partners that OnlyFans is able to support all types of creators.
Many creators, who struggled to find alternative content in the wake last week's announcement, do not consider this a victory. Anshuman Iddamsetty says that while this victory is temporary, it's only temporary. Anshuman, a nonbinary creator, uploads content devoted to fat pleasure under the pseudonym Boarlord. Never has a platform ever reversed its course. I was concerned by the language they used in their announcement. Suspend doesnt instill confidence. They refused to name sex workers and erotic laborers. The porn ban may be reinstated October 2.
Both creators and OnlyFans are facing uncertain times. OnlyFans plans to make it public in the next year. Although the site boasts more than 130million users and 2,000,000 creators, hostility towards the porn industry has increased in recent years as adult subscription websites have grown in popularity. Sites like OnlyFans are partly to blame for the increase in child porn.
It is time to discuss how our banking system has quietly declared themselves the new morality cop, Iddamsetty said. He cited payment processors Mastercard and Visa as being under pressure by conservative groups Exodus Cry (NCOSE), to cut ties with platforms that allow explicit sexual expression.
