OnlyFans announced Thursday that beginning this fall, it will no longer permit users to post “sexually explicit” pictures or videos to its platform, Bloomberg News first reported.
The website, which boomed in popularity amid the pandemic with sex workers who post content for profit, said starting in October, the company would implement new policies for all users, banning sexual content.
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“OnlyFans will prohibit the posting of any content containing sexually-explicit conduct,” read a statement from the company. “In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of our platform, and ... to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines.”
Content creators can still post nudity in photos and videos, the company told Bloomberg, “provided they’re consistent with OnlyFans’ policy.”
While the company has been praised for giving sex workers autonomy over their finances, OnlyFans wants to rebrand and be known as more than a platform for sex work. Musicians and celebrities like Cardi B have set up accounts, and the site wants to attract more creators.
OnlyFans has struggled to garner outside investors, Axios’ sources said, and investing in the sex industry is not particularly attractive to most venture capitalists. The company wants to raise enough money to buy out its majority owner and provide the company with “more legitimacy,” the outlet said.
“These changes are to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers,” the statement said.
More than 130 million people use the subscription platform that saw more than $2 billion in sales last year. Adult content creators account for most of its payouts. Many of them joined at the outset of or during the pandemic as a way to make money.
The site's top competitor — JustForFans — released a statement Thursday afternoon accusing OnlyFans of "abandoning" its creators to go "mainstream," and saying it would welcome all stranded adult creators to its platform.
"The adult industry is sadly used to companies cutting their teeth on the adult market and then abandoning them," said the statement from JustForFans, which claimed to be built for and by sex workers. "We are a porn site. That will never change."
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