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Media Businesses The Almighty Buck

OnlyFans To Block Sexually Explicit Videos Starting In October (bloomberg.com) 301

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: OnlyFans is getting out of the pornography business. The company will prohibit users from posting any sexually explicit conduct, starting in October. Creators will still be allowed to post nude photos and videos, provided they're consistent with OnlyFans' policy, the company said Thursday. The changes are needed because of mounting pressure from banking partners and payment providers, according to the company. "In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of our platform, and the continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines," OnlyFans said.

OnlyFans has attracted more than 130 million users by giving online creators a platform to charge their fans for photos and videos. Many of its most-popular creators post nude photos and videos, and it has been praised for giving sex workers a safer place to do their jobs. But sex work still has a stigma. And OnlyFans is trying to raise money from outside investors at a valuation of more than $1 billion. The company handled more than $2 billion in sales last year, and is on pace to more than double that this year. It keeps 20% of that figure.
"These changes are to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers," says OnlyFans in a statement. "We will be sharing more details in the coming days and we will actively support and guide our creators through this change in content guidelines..."
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OnlyFans To Block Sexually Explicit Videos Starting In October

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  • by fred6666 ( 4718031 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:24PM (#61708761)

    I mean, why would people pay for that site otherwise?

    • Yes & No (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      they want investors, and they won't get them as long as they're full of porn. Their main purpose is, surprisingly, not the porn, but lonely men with no relationship prospects thanks to our ever worsening economy. That's where the real money is for them. You can get porn elsewhere on the Internet (or so I've been told). Their market is fake companionship.
      • Re:Yes & No (Score:5, Funny)

        by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:54PM (#61708879)

        And lonely men who can't get into relationships are looking for... sensible discussions?

        Boy, the world changed since I was young and horny.

        • And lonely men who can't get into relationships are looking for... sensible discussions?

          Boy, the world changed since I was young and horny.

          Yep...as the saying goes: "Talk is Cheap".

          As anybody that is getting laid can tell you...THAT costs money....lots of it, no matter how you are getting it (pros, dating or marriage).

          • Umm... not sure how to tell you, but I think you're doing it wrong.

        • they're looking for a women to say their name, chat a bit and make them feel special.

          I'm in introvert so I don't really get it, but I know extroverted nerds and they're highly vulnerable to that sort of thing. They desperately want to be around people, but they're either weird or ugly or both so people don't want to be around them. If you don't know anyone like that (and know them pretty well) you've probably never seen it.
        • Parasocial relationships.
      • Their main purpose is, surprisingly, not the porn, but lonely men with no relationship prospects thanks to our ever worsening economy.

        Well of course if they are looking for gold diggers wife then the economy might have something to do with it, but otherwise, poor people and people in poor countries don't seem to have anymore problems in finding a partner than the rich. They even have more kids on average.

        So in short, I wouldn't blame the economy if I didn't have a wife. Especially since it's not as if we were anywhere close to the great depression. COVID did impact some sectors hard, but overall we are doing just fine.

        • poor people and people in poor countries don't seem to have anymore problems in finding a partner than the rich.

          In those poor countries you speak of, in many cases there are arranged marriages. As a woman, you're pretty much told who you will marry and when.

          They even have more kids on average.

          Which is one reason they continue to be poor. As the facts show, the more educated a person, particularly women, the fewer kids they have. This holds true even for poor people from other countries who come to the

          • You will be surprised to know this but arranged marriage is done between both women AND men. They are both told to marry someone. I know, radical!!!

          • Re: Yes & No (Score:5, Interesting)

            by getuid() ( 1305889 ) on Friday August 20, 2021 @06:22AM (#61710867)

            In those poor countries you speak of, in many cases there are arranged marriages. As a woman, you're pretty much told who you will marry and when

            Believe it or not, in most poor countries, being poor you still live a more dignified life than in the USA.

            Case in point: I have close friends, and somewhat of a life, in one of the former eastern European countries. Average income: about $500 / month, gas prices around $1.5 / liter, same as Western Europe. So "raw" cost of survival (food, clothes) will be about $300-1000 (comparable the West). You need two salaries, or any side gig to make ends meet. So it's a poor country.

            BUT:

            - $80k will buy you a 2-3 bedroom appartment downtown, or a comparable house with small garden on the outskits of a major city.

            - $15k will buy you a new car, $500 an old one that will last 2 years .

            - $5k (yes, that's right) will buy you a small house on the country side within 1h dricng distance of a large town, $20k will buy you enough property that you can grow basic vegetables and maintain a cow or few sheep.

            - $9 will buy you Gbps fibre optics internet. A 2nd hand PC is more expensive than in the US, but you'd be surprised how much work you can get done on a 3rd-5th gen i5 with 4GB of RAM and an SSD, which you can buy for $150 tops.

            - You'll get state health care. It's crappy, buy it'll stitch you up after an accident, set a fractured bone, operate a hernia or an appendix, eventually send you an ambulancei if you have a heart attack, keep you on s hospital bed fir 2 weeks if you have a septicemia or pneumonia etc... all things that are pretty much death sentences if you're poor in the US.

            - you'll have 2 years (!) of paid maternity leave, 5 or 6 if your kid has a diagnosed condition like autism, asperger etc, by law.

            - you'll have paid sick leave (mandated by law) and 4 weeks minimum, in addition to national holidays, of paid vacation.

            So... no. Living poor in most countries is a major inconvenience , but it's not a potential death sentence, like it is in the US. Having or not having children doesn't potentially make the difference between living or dying from a seasonal flu, bicicle accident or septicemia.

            This is probably why people have kids over there, while in the US they don't. In fact I've never heard the phrase "too poor for children" *anywhere* except the US, and I've visited about a dozen countries on 3 continents.

        • you need money to go out and meet people, and you need to be financially stable to maintain a relationship because, well, it's difficult to maintain anything when you're constantly worried about money.

          During the Great Depression we were still pretty backwards, and women were more or less forced into marriage. There are a lot of people who want to go back to those days for just that reason.
        • Covid made it hard to meet people in person though. During the pandemic, this has been a real issue. Before I met my wife, I remember trying those online dating services (this was before we had smart phones and swiping) and while I got a couple of dates, I found that I did a whole lot better fishing in person.

          At this point, I assume half the profiles are fake and the other half are really choosy women that want the best of the best despite the fact that the average person is still the average. It was very d

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        they want investors, and they won't get them as long as they're full of porn.

        And they need paying customers, which they won't get without porn.

        There are only 2 possible outcomes of this decision:
        - They will eventually go back to allowing porn
        - They will be out of business in a year

        • by rworne ( 538610 )

          they want investors, and they won't get them as long as they're full of porn.

          And they need paying customers, which they won't get without porn.

          There are only 2 possible outcomes of this decision:

            - They will eventually go back to allowing porn

            - They will be out of business in a year

          They tried this before with Tumblr. How'd that work out?

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Why would a worsening economy make more lonely men?

        • also the young folk work a *lot*. My kid is doing 50-60/wk. Lower pay and super expensive housing means they're desperate for overtime so they can try and save some money. They're in medical, and with all the hospitals being bought up wages keep going down because there's fewer and fewer employers to work for. That's a trend we're seeing everywhere as mega corps buy up all the businesses.

          It's hard to date when you work non stop, and you don't really have the money anyway. That makes it hard to meet peop
      • by gmack ( 197796 )

        Honestly, I think you have it wrong. They specifically mentioned payment providers and I'm guessing that after the Mindgeek fiasco, payment providers are afraid to process anything that risks revenge porn and so are cutting off any explicit content that is user generated. That would leave onlyfans in the position of losing their payment processors if they don't comply.

        I can tell you from experience that payment providers are a skittish bunch and will terminate a relationship to avoid even the hint of a pr

      • Re:Yes & No (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ayesnymous ( 3665205 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @07:48PM (#61709791)
        Why do they need investors, keep running the site as is.
        • RTFA and you'll see it's not about investors. Rather, credit card organizations have signaled they will refuse to process credit card transactions for OnlyFans, and thus cut off all of its income, if OnlyFans does not change its policy.

          The changes are needed because of mounting pressure from banking partners and payment providers, according to the company.

          Apparently the credit card processors are claiming that OnlyFans has problems with porn depicting minors, trafficking of women who provide the porn or who use the site to arrange prostitution, and so on. Real ethical issues if the claims are true. I personally have no idea if

      • Re:Yes & No (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Sleeping Kirby ( 919817 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @08:04PM (#61709843)
        I've always found this weird about western mentality. Sex sells. We should advertise everything with sex. Advertise and make everything with sex. Clothes, burgers, tv shows. But we don't want to actually invest/back/support in anything that has actual sex. No, that'd drive customers and investors away.
        • Investors largely don't give a crap. They might actually blink a few times if something bad happens on OnlyFans, maybe involving minors or whatever and it becoming a major news item. Until the next dividend is paid out.

          But banks... I'm not sure what is up with banks. They hate porn, for some reason. They are happy to count arms dealers, criminals, ISIS and Disney amongst their customers. But purveyors of porn? Big no-no. And it seems to be a pretty universal sentiment amongst banks. In this count
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      > and the continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines," OnlyFans said.

      I love how they try and bring "inclusive" in this... To be inclusive you can NOT EXCLUDE else your just the same being racist and phobiaist.

    • I was wondering the same, is there any other content on it?

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I tried to have a look at the site but it doesn't show anything unless you have an account.

      Anyway, I have heard that a lot of the stuff on there is not so explicit that it will be banned. Stuff like bikini try-ons, "artistic" nudes, basically stuff that is a step down from hardcore porn and strippers.

    • by slaker ( 53818 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @04:27PM (#61709047)

      Hi.

      I'm in a weird category here because I help Onlyfans creators make content. For the last 18 months, I've been a person getting paid to help them with photography, lighting, video editing.I have a trusted place for people who worked at my local strip club and that turned in to a paying thing for me. Turns out that it's pretty easy to do my day job and process video.

      Here's the deal: Not every account posts explicit content. Some people post pin up photos or stuff that's just a little too racy to go on Insta. One person I know just live streams her gaming in the nude. But what I've found is that there's zero relationship between explicit content and how big an account is.

      It's also true that most accounts don't make THAT much money. The creators get barraged by messages asking for all sorts of weird stuff, or whatever parasocial engagement they need to keep somebody subbed. The biggest accounts have to have assistants to deal with it all. It's a lot of work. But a top 10% Onlyfans account is making just over $1000 a month. That's nice as a side gig, but the messaging aspect of it quickly turns into a full time job.

      All this is to say that the social aspect of interacting with subscribers is almost always a bigger draw than what someone will or won't do in front of a camera. Onlyfans grew because it didn't take the huge cut that services like MyFreeCams and Chaturbate do, and all this really means is that OF creators that still want to do explicit content will just be providing links through other services.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's a shame because it provided a safe space for sex workers, and as you say the cut was lower than most competitors.

  • by Kisai ( 213879 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:25PM (#61708767)

    Well, Onlyfans joined Tumblr and and MySpace, as companies that don't know what their site is actually used for, and the investors will not see a their money go up in smoke.

    • by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:56PM (#61708887) Journal
      Well, Onlyfans joined Tumblr and and MySpace, as companies that don't know what their site is actually used for, and the investors will not see a their money go up in smoke.

      You are correct. The statistics don't lie. When Tumblr forced people to have accounts to see the more risque material in an effort to supposedly cut down on the rape videos and kiddie porn, their traffic plummeted [statista.com]. Even their unique visitors through the first six months of this year have fallen [statista.com].
    • Well, Onlyfans joined Tumblr and and MySpace, as companies that don't know what their site is actually used for, and the investors will not see a their money go up in smoke.

      Exactly. The best thing OnlyFans could do is to remain private or be content with the investing it can get with its current golden egg goose (its pr0n content providers.) Sex sells, period.

      And OF is not a small operation. It's big enough to make a fortune operating as-is, even powerful enough to pursue the creation of its own payment processing.

      Seems kinda disingenuous and not bizness intelligent to sideline the main line of bizness that's bringing them the riches. It's like movie theaters all of the su

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I was going to say Playboy, that time they decided to stop featuring nudes and test the claim that people buy it for the articles.

  • by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:26PM (#61708769) Journal

    Finance is the *new* tyrant. How do we get around it?

    • Bitcoin! Bitcoin! Bitcoin! Bitcoin!

    • New?

      There was another one?

    • Running high traffic sites is expensive.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @04:17PM (#61709007) Homepage Journal

      The problem is any business founded on the basis of free speech inevitably fails and usually gets all puritanical too.

      Just look at the number of free speech sites that have come and gone in the last few years, supposedly there to replace Twitter and Reddit and Patreon. They all ran out of cash, and most of them eventually banned porn too.

    • Banks pushing morality ... oh the irony.
  • What? (Score:5, Funny)

    by know-nothing cunt ( 6546228 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:28PM (#61708775)

    I thought they sold fans. Only fans.

    Next you'll be telling me Xhamster isn't a pet supply site.

  • They should register onlyadultfans.com or something like that, and move all the stuff their prudish investors and bankers don't like there. Then spin that off to a separate company. The downside is that this probably would take too long, and they need the banking and investor support now.

    • by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      The problem is "onlyfans" as a brand is already synonymous with porn. They'd have better luck starting a new site and making that the "safe space".

  • by fulldecent ( 598482 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:39PM (#61708797) Homepage

    Basically everybody knows about OF right now. How much more growth do they need?

    Why can't people just be happy with making a decent product, and growing organically? That allows you to set your own rules and make your own product.

  • by tgeek ( 941867 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:41PM (#61708809)
    Let's see . . . you're grossing $2B and keeping 20% for a take of $400M. And you need to raise outside money? What the fuck are you spending the $400M on??? If you need more money to build yer Scrooge McDuck money tower, the solution seems to be MORE porn, not LESS!!!

    P.S. Good luck with your valuation after you kill the golden goose.
    • by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:44PM (#61708821) Homepage

      They know the writing is on the wall - they're going to lose the ability to accept credit cards. You can't operate online in the US and not take credit cards. They're going to cash out via stupid investors.

      • Sounds like they need to start a sister business to route all their transactions through. If they don't do it, somebody else will...
      • Gambling industry seems to be doing well enough. ;-)

        • Gambling industry seems to be doing well enough. ;-)

          I'm guessing you missed the US Supreme Court decision which struck down the 1992 federal law banning sports betting. Any US state that wants to can now host a gambling site legally.

          • by taustin ( 171655 )

            There are US Supreme Court rulings that struck down anti-porn laws, too. Quite a few, over the years. Porn has been constitutionally protected for decades.

            This has nothing to do with legal or illegal. It has to do with what banks will let you conduct credit card transactions for.

      • by tgeek ( 941867 )
        I agree with the last part "They're going to cash out via stupid investors." But I'm not so sure about losing the ability to accept credit cards. There's quite a few HUGE porn sites (so I hear ;-) accepting credit cards - why not use the same processor those use? Financial firms are notorious for putting away their personal judgments and morals when they smell money!
    • What the fuck are you spending the $400M on???

      Have you seen the price of lube?

    • Whats more strange is understanding how a company with revenue of 400M and are apparently on track to double that this year can only be worth 1bn

      You could buy out the company and make your money back in 18 months *shrugs*.

  • Uh oh (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Better download all the Andrea Rosu and thick-thigh tranny videos while I can!

  • by atomicalgebra ( 4566883 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:44PM (#61708819)
    Now I can build an alternative website and get all of their fleeing customers.
  • by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:46PM (#61708839)

    Silly people deserve to lose money and porn routes around damage.

    Americans are fiercely (p)uritanical at heart so porn hosting should move to freer nations offshore. The US right wing are religious fanatics and most of the left don't really approve of sexual freedom for anyone who doesn't share their personal esthetic preferences. Not my problem but quite entertaining like other antics of passionate dimwits.

    What REALLY bothers right and left is the idea of young females owning their own bodies rather than using those bodies in accordance with others demands. It's all about controlling the pussy/bussy and nothing enrages a sexual idealist like monetizing lust.

  • It's so crazy it might just work (no, it won't).

  • by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:47PM (#61708843) Homepage

    Their entire business model is based on nudity. It's like a casino agreed to stop the gambling in exchange for letting their restaurants accept VISA.

    • by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

      It's not really suicide... it's more like they were told, "nice business you have here, be a shame if something happened to it" and got threatened to have their legs broken (income disrupted) if they didn't comply.

      The merchant banks (likely as a result of being told, "nice business you have here, be a shame if something happened to it") have decided that it's their job to determine who is allowed to spend money on what.

  • by queazocotal ( 915608 ) on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:49PM (#61708851)
    The URL is an active onlyfans page on the reporting of various aspects of their services interaction with legal bodies, it does not contain the quote.
  • The same shit went down at Imgur.com when the original owners sold out and that site has never been as robust or as good since then. I expect nothing less at onlyfans.

  • Cause if they are, I can guess with no insider information on my part, it's time to short before all the executive issue sell orders.

  • OnlyFans knows why they are popular. This will not end well for them.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The MAIN reason people would pay to access videos/photos of somebody is porn. Take that away and the service is dead as a dodo.
  • I've seen situations first hand where rules were being piled on, in a rapid fire manner, usually by narcassist tin pots. The end result was more often than not a place with angrier and demoralized people, more corruption, cloak and daggar behavior, favoritism, selective enforcement, and ultimately it's own underworld and "snitches get stitches" culture. Also, even the 'obedient' people stop respecting the rules when they keep changing literally every week, which I've seen happen.

    Maybe this has very

  • While almost everyone might prefer Facebook wasn't involved, this once again does show the necessity of a widespread no charge back payment method.

    Everyone except me, they sell advertising and you're the product, politicians buy advertising. Don't like it? Don't use it. Everything has been blown out of proportion because of Trump derangement syndrome. I don't see any need to distrust any contractual obligations they take on and as far as I can see Facebook has no legal ability to use the Diem payment data f

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