The Indefensible Cruelty of OnlyFans’ Porn Ban

This article has been updated following new reporting on significant failures in OnlyFans’ platform moderation. In other words, OnlyFans is discarding the people who made it a behemoth and hoping to sell the platform those workers popularized to enough big investors for the company’s insiders to get rich. Update, Aug. 20, 12:43 a.m.: A few hours after OnlyFans announced the policy change on Thursday, the BBC published an investigation into the company’s content moderation practices. The BBC reported that OnlyFans “allows moderators to give multiple warnings to accounts that post illegal content on its online platform before deciding to close them,” which, according to experts interviewed by the news organization, reveals the company’s tolerance for illegal content. The news outlet says a lawyer directed it to one video in which a woman, whose face is never shown, appears in a room totally covered in rugs, and that the video includes “repeated references to traveling across Europe”—hallmarks, the BBC says, “of trafficking and exploitation.” Further, the BBC also cites moderator sources who say they “have found prostitution services advertised, bestiality and material one moderator believed to be incest.” OnlyFans defended itself, saying it exceeds “all relevant global safety standards and regulations,” and sought to portray one of the BBC’s sources as a moderator who had been fired for repeatedly failing to remove unauthorized content from the platform.