According to Multiple News Outlets – OnlyFans is Changing Their Terms to Ban Pornography

News broke on Thursday, August 19th, that popular fan club platform OnlyFans gave an alleged statement to Bloomberg directly from owner Leonid Radvinsky who is widely known in the adult industry for founding the adult webcam website MyFreeCams that they will be banning sexually explicit content. According to Bloomberg writer Lucas Shaw, Leonid Radvinsky had this to say: “In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of our platform, and continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines.” While this doesn’t seem like a clear call for the total ban of pornographic content and is the only direct quote included in the article, Bloomberg also stated: “OnlyFans is getting out of the pornography business. Starting in October, the company will prohibit creators from posting material with sexually explicit conduct on its website, which many sex workers use to sell fans explicit content. They’ll still be allowed to put up nude photos and videos, provided they’re consistent with OnlyFans’ policy, the company said Thursday.” There is no direct quote to support the claims that sexually explicit content will be banned and the only direct statement from Radvinsky seems to indicate it could be updates to become more compliant with payment processing guidelines in light of the Pornhub/Modelhub debacle which has started to impact a majority of popular adult websites.

The writer of the article that catalyzed the general panic, Lucas Shaw, appears to have a strange interest in OnlyFans which is noted by numerous articles about OnlyFans between his mainstream coverage. He wrote about OnlyFans looking for funding, OnlyFans creating an app, and how celebrities are turning OnlyFans into a billion dollar app. In between articles about Logan Paul, TikTok, Amazon, and South Park on a website that charges for viewing articles after the first 3 it leads to the question… is this news, or is this clickbait?

Industry in Conflict Over the News, while Mainstream Media Sensationalizes the Potential Fallout for Pornstars

Many individuals in the adult industry have reached out to OnlyFans Support via their unverified support Twitter (which is notorious for providing customer service before this) as well as the contact forum directly on OnlyFans to get answers about this breaking news. The response received has indicated that OnlyFans intends to continue allowing adult content on the platform, which leaves a lot to debate about the validity of the Bloomberg article. As usual, mainstream news outlets have hopped on this news and are spreading it like crazy. A search for “OnlyFans Banning Porn” yields tons of results from reputable news networks that are looking to gain clicks on this potential breaking news. Sex workers in crisis are frequently sensationalized by mainstream news for views because struggle sex work is often read about and spread in order to continue spreading the anti-porn rhetoric that is very active online.

this is all from onlyfans from the past few hours. please spread pic.twitter.com/RBtwTdJxkC

— cal? (@cal_gif) August 19, 2021

Is OnlyFans REALLY Banning Pornography?

We can’t be sure, but if you use history as an example then it wouldn’t be too farfetched. OnlyFans did allow pornography to be posted while their terms clearly banned it years ago, much like when “Private Snapchat” was all the rage and they simply allowed it to fly under the radar to benefit from the traffic. Allegedly, according to various performers acquainted with OnlyFans headquarters workers, OnlyFans will be releasing a statement August 20th, 2021.

OnlyFans is Notorious for Vague Terms of Use to Appease Payment Processors

While the news that OnlyFans might be banning “sexually explicit” content is shocking to some performers, it is actually them reverting back to old rules! (source) As of 2016, 2017, and 2018 OnlyFans “coached” performers through email about posting in ways to not alert their payment processor and in an e-mail directly to Webcam Startup said sexually explicit content is not allowed on OnlyFans. When we initially posted the news on Twitter, the reaction was very negative and defensive with many performers accusing us of lying. Others reached out with screenshots of e-mails that said that sexually explicit content was in fact banned, we are unsure if this was confusion amongst the support team or if OnlyFans was a master at damage control but with this history of confusing terms and lying to performers it wouldn’t be surprising if this news is true and they are lying their way through it until the October acceptable use update.

As a Performer, What Do I Do Now?

Diversify. If you are a content creator the best way to prevent panic about things like this (which unfortunately happen fairly often) is to diversify your income by posting your content on multiple sales platforms. There are many great OnlyFans Alternatives that you can post to and direct your audience toward in the case where OnlyFans does ban adult.

If you are not already using your own domain to direct people to your OnlyFans, now would be a great time to start doing it. If OnlyFans does ban adult content, you can easily swap the OnlyFans link to a different forwarding link for your domain and it will not impact your social media posts and advertising. If you don’t want to invest in a domain, you also have the option to utilize a link sharing service as your “home base” that contains all of your links which you can label with things like “fanclub” and swap out the OnlyFans link easily.

You can also achieve better search engine optimization by creating your own website instead of using a link sharing service. Search engine optimization can help bring you organic traffic from search engine results as well as help you claim your brand name and move pirate sites down lower in search results. With your own website you can post blog updates about changing fanclub platforms, collect e-mails for a newsletter, and link to your preferred sites in one easy to find location.

Learn More: Building A Website For A Webcam Model (Easy and Free!)