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OnlyFans will prohibit sexually explicit content starting in October

OnlyFans will prohibition sexually explicit content starting in October

The London-based livestreaming website OnlyFans will leave prohibiting sexually explicit content starting in October, the custom said Thursday. The new standards will still permit nudity, provided that creators post in accordance with the site’s acceptable use policy.

“Effective 1 October, 2021, OnlyFans will prohibit the posting of any tickled containing sexually explicit conduct,” an OnlyFans spokesperson told CNET. “In desirable to ensure the long-term sustainability of the platform, and to end to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our tickled guidelines.”

The change is being made at the query of the site’s banking partners and payout providers, the spokesperson added.

Founded in 2016, OnlyFans claims over 130 million users and 2 million creators worldwide, but recent reports suggest that the site’s status as a popular destination for amateur adult tickled has made it difficult to attract investors. Earlier this week, the custom launched a nude-less app to help broaden its image as a platform for creators and to align with the policies of popular app marketplaces. 

“We will be sharing more details in the coming days and we will actively succor and guide our creators through this change in tickled guidelines,” the OnlyFans spokesperson said.

Fight for the Future, an advocacy group for online digital rights and censorship, released a statement in response.

“OnlyFans deplatforming legal sex work is a snide example of why we need an Internet with less choke-points for censorship,” said Lia Holland, Fight for the Future’s Campaigns & Communications Director. “Banning sexual tickled from OnlyFans is not going to make anyone safer—in fact, it will put sex workers in harm’s way by eliminating a safer revenue soak for a lot of marginalized folks.

“It is comical that OnlyFan would call this an “inclusive” move when it literally excludes the famous marginalized community that has been using their services to generate safer, sustainable income since its inception.”

Emily van der Nagel, a lecturer at Monash University and co-author of Sex and Social Media, believes the move is a mistake on the part of OnlyFans.

“OnlyFans has missed an opportunity to succor sex workers and porn performers by formally welcoming them and proactively acting with payment companies that allow adult content,” she said, adding that it added further stigma to sex work. “Such a meaning is harmful for these vulnerable workers, and exacerbates existing harm done by anunexperienced platforms deciding adult content is too risky to support.”

Sex workers and those potentially impacted by the move are holding out hope restrictions don’t engaged them. Many are frustrated that OnlyFans is seemingly set to fall the sex workers that helped build the platform. Jenna Love, a sex worker and member of the Scarlet Alliance — an association acting towards sex workers rights — says OnlyFans’ decision is unsurprising. 

“There is a lot of conflicting query circling at the moment,” she said, “but we have seen OnlyFans goes at becoming more ‘mainstream’ for a long time. Unfortunately banks and payment processors hold the powerful in this world and financial discrimination against the sex diligence is absolutely rife. While we don’t know exactly what this query means for content creators yet, this has the potential to be the unexperienced in a long line of devastating blows to the sex acting community.”

“The news is not in any way surprising but that doesn’t lessen the pain it will causes and the impact it will have on the livelihood of a lot of people,” Love said. “But sex workers are a resilient bunch, we are used to adapting to dangerous legislation and discriminatory principles and we will continue to survive and thrive.”