OnlyFans, the social network built largely on the racy work of the sex workers there, last week announced a ban on adult material. Partly a desire to go mainstream, and partly pressure from payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard, the move led to a surprisingly intense PR backlash and today the company announced it was reversing its plans.
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. OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators.
An official communication to creators will be emailed shortly.
This might be a good sign that companies are becoming less afraid of conservatives and more afraid of everyone else. Fear is the only way this work gets done, and this backlash was strong enough to change the business calculation. OnlyFans is British company, so I imagine that American corporate prudery was always something that had to be explained to it rather than felt in the pit of the stomach. This would explain why it was happy to host and benefit from sex work in the first place, and why such a quick reversal of this policy could happen.
