OnlyFans has been in the fight of its life this past week. After days of frustrated users voicing their concerns online, the platform has decided to officially call off its adult content ban to continue welcoming creators of all categories.
Earlier today (Aug. 25), the company took to Twitter to issue a statement addressing the news of its October ban that would restrict any and all sexually-explicit content on the platform. OnlyFans thanked users for “making their voices heard” and went on to announce it has suspended its plan to change its content policy in the fall.
“We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change,” the company tweeted. “OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators.”
Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard.
We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change.
OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators.
— OnlyFans (@OnlyFans) August 25, 2021
A formal statement will be emailed to all creators on the platform later today.
Banks Were Almost Responsible For OnlyFans' Demise
The latest update arrives just after users across social media began condemning the platform for shutting out the sex workers who make a living off their explicit content on OnlyFans and helped the platform earn its popularity. Even people like Tyga proposed his own alternative to save users who would be without a creative avenue to release the content they’d like on a platform that freely supported it.
However, the company made it clear its decision to initially implement the ban was brought on by “pressure from banking partners and payout providers” to comply with their requests.
“The change in policy, we had no choice — the short answer is banks,” OnlyFans CEO Tim Stokely told the Financial Times of several bank partners citing “reputational risk” and refusing the platform’s business. “This decision was made to safeguard [creators’] funds and subscriptions from increasingly unfair actions by banks and media companies — we obviously do not want to lose our most loyal creators.”
Sex Workers Made OnlyFans What It Is
Over the last year, OnlyFans gained a huge reputation for its subscription-based model that allowed a new wave of sexually-liberated creators and “regular degular” people to make money through adult entertainment. This trend exploded over the course of the COVID-19 lockdown when many people were forced to find new streams of revenue as a result of layoffs and businesses shutting down. So when the announcement of its evolving content guidelines arrived, it made many people wonder why OnlyFans was all but “selling out” its biggest pool of earners.
Apparently, the issue wasn’t so black-and-white as Stokely made it clear that OnlyFans would “absolutely” welcome sexually explicit material back on its site if it weren’t at the mercy of the banks. However, CNN Business reports the platform has assured us that “the proposed October 1, 2021 changes are no longer required due to banking partners’ assurances that OnlyFans can support all genres of creators.”
It looks like OnlyFans and its creators’ ways of doing content are here to stay, for now at least. However, users will see how the platform nets out come October.