OnlyFans reverses plan to ban porn after uproar from adult content creators
OnlyFans has announced that it's reversing course on a previously promised ban on adult content, following outrage from some accounts on its website that create pornographic content.
The London, England-based social media website had recently announced that, effective on Oct. 1, they were going to prohibit pornographic content in response to concerns by various groups.
However, in a statement posted on its Twitter account Wednesday, OnlyFans told supporters that it was putting the adult content ban on hold, possibly indefinitely.
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“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,” tweeted OnlyFans. “OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators.”
Although the Twitter statement has garnered over 33,400 likes by Thursday morning, some OnlyFans account holders who produce adult content have demanded compensation for purported loss of business due to the earlier announcement.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation expressed disappointment in response to the announcement, having previously called on OnlyFans to drop its sexually explicit content.
“OnlyFans has chosen to continue its exploitation, despite knowing that it will face increasing criminal scrutiny over reports of filmed child sexual abuse, sex trafficking, and other non-consensually recorded sex acts being sold on its website,” said NCOSE Vice President Haley McNamara in a statement on Wednesday.
“NCOSE remains steadfast in holding OnlyFans accountable for enabling abuse and exploitation, and we reiterate our call on the Department of Justice to join the FBI and other law enforcement agencies in investigating this platform.”
McNamara went on to state that she believed verification policies that OnlyFans has “are useless in practice, given that a BBC investigation revealed that a 14-year-old was able to use the passport of her grandmother to create an OnlyFans account.”
“And this problem is inherent because OnlyFans allows user-uploaded content, like other pornography tube websites, with weak age or consent verification of those depicted in the material,” continued McNamara.
Founded in 2016, OnlyFans has been accused of not properly filtering pornographic content, including illicit material that includes actual depictions of sexual abuse and assault.
Earlier this month, more than 100 members of Congress representing both major parties sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland calling on him to investigate OnlyFans over its content involving the sexual abuse of children.
Congressmen accused OnlyFans of being “a major marketplace for buying and selling Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) in the United States, as well as soliciting sexual activity with minors.”
“We request the U.S. Department of Justice investigate the content sold on OnlyFans.com, as well as the policies, or lack thereof, that OnlyFans employs to report instances of CSAM or child exploitation on their platform,” read the letter in part.
“With more than 220 million monthly visitors on OnlyFans, the pervasiveness of CSAM on this website, as well as any business practices used to shield such content from scrutiny, must be investigated.”
The members of Congress cited a report by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which found “a continuously increasing amount of CSAM and child exploitation on OnlyFans.”
