OnlyFans changes its mind

But the biggest questions about its future are still unanswered

Aug 26, 2021

(Jakub Porzycki / Getty Images)

Yesterday I wrote here that OnlyFans' decision to ban adult content might someday be seen as “a watershed in the evolution of the consumer internet,” one that might accelerate the adoption of cryptocurrency payments and blockchain apps in general. And so naturally, just a few hours later, OnlyFans announced that it was totally reversing itself.

“We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change,” the company tweeted, just before 5AM Pacific time. “OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators.”

It thanked its creators “for making your voices heard.”

I asked the company to clarify what exactly had changed between yesterday — when its CEO expounded on the banking-related difficulties facing OnlyFans at some length — and this morning.

“The proposed October 1, 2021 changes are no longer required due to banking partners' assurances that OnlyFans can support all genres of creators,” OnlyFans told me over email. It declined to answer any follow-up questions.

On one hand, OnlyFans’ reversal is not as surprising as it might first appear. In his interview with the Financial Times, CEO Tim Stokely was paraphrased as saying “he would ‘absolutely’ welcome porn back if the banking environment was to change.” Well, the banking environment apparently did change, and he did welcome porn back. Case closed!

On the other hand, though, it remains totally unclear how the banking environment changed. In his FT interview, Stokely called out three banks by name for either cancelling OnlyFans’ corporate accounts or denying payments to its creators: Bank of New York Mellon, JPMorgan Chase, and the United Kingdom’s Metro Bank. All three have declined to comment about the situation.

That leaves two possibilities for what changed overnight. One is that one or more of these banks relented, and gave OnlyFans new guarantees about maintaining its corporate accounts and approving payouts to its creators. The other is that amid huge international interest in the OnlyFans story, one or more new banks volunteered to take on OnlyFans (and its hundreds of millions of dollars) as a client.

I hope that OnlyFans will soon reveal which of these scenarios played out — and, if it was new banks that stepped in, who they are and what their policies are. The livelihoods of tens of thousands of current and future creators are hanging in the balance, and OnlyFans owes them as much certainty as it can offer. Some of the platform’s top earners spent the past week trying to determine how to migrate their businesses to less chaotic providers; if OnlyFans wants to keep them, it needs to provide a more complete explanation of recent events.

And it’s not just creators to whom OnlyFans will have to explain itself. The privately held company paused its fundraising efforts this week amid uncertainty over … the future of its entire business, Insider reported. The company is reportedly seeking a valuation of at least $1 billion, which its estimated revenues of $400 million last year would easily justify in most Silicon Valley fundraising rounds. But the stigma around porn and the deplatforming risks that come with it have spooked investors, and the past week’s events will likely only make them more anxious.

Ultimately, I expect most creators on OnlyFans will choose to stay, at least for the time being. Its brand in the adult content industry is, ironically, stronger than ever now; it has a large base of happy, paying customers; and the power of inertia is strong. (Who wants to port their entire audience to another platform if they don’t have to?)

That said, I also expect more creators to start refining their Plan B. More explicitly porn-friendly clones like JustFor.Fans say they have already scooped up thousands of defectors, and creators would be wise to develop alternative beachheads on other platforms — even if they are ultimately no more stable than OnlyFans.

Less clear to me is what this means for efforts to move adult content onto a decentralized platform. Yesterday, I speculated that a crackdown on internet porn could push millions of people to use blockchain apps and make cryptocurrency payments for the first time. That scenario still seems plausible to me over the long term. But if traditional banks really are going to be willing partners of the adult content industry, there will be fewer incentives to switch, and the blockchain will have to find a new killer app.

This summer’s internet-wide conversation about the metaverse has led to many predictions that individual creators will make up a huge part of the economy in coming years. The OnlyFans story offers a vivid illustration of just how precarious that life can be. On platforms, even creators who follow the rules regularly find out just how abruptly those rules can change to their detriment. And a career path celebrated for the independence it offers is revealed to have difficult dependencies of its own.

To some degree, I think that will always be the case. But for all of us out here trying to do our work independently of big corporations, OnlyFans’ flailing this week offers a cautionary lesson: own as many layers of the stack as you can for yourself, or you just might find yourself crushed by someone else’s.

The Ratio

Today in news that could affect public perception of the big tech companies.

⬇️ Trending down: A study of extremism on TikTok found that videos that amplify white supremacy are getting millions of views. “Three of the 10 most popular videos, viewed a combined 3.5 million times, were clips originally produced by Paul Miller, an extremist known as ‘Gypsy Crusader’ who spreads racist and antisemitic rhetoric on social media.” (Jessica Guynn / USA Today)

Governing

⭐ The United Kingdom’s Age Appropriate Design Code comes into force next week, forcing platforms to take additional steps to protect children’s privacy. Here’s Madhumita Murgia in the Financial Times:

The rules proposed by the UK regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office, seek to limit companies from tracking the location of children, personalising content or advertising for them, and serving up behavioural nudges, such as automatically playing videos. […]
In the past two months, the largest social-media platforms, including YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, have announced changes related to children’s privacy in advance of the code’s enforcement.

Tech giants committed to spend tens of billions of dollars on investments in cybersecurity to defend critical infrastructure and the supply chain after meeting with President Biden. Microsoft pledged $20 billion; Google pledged $10 billion; Amazon “is planning to give account holders free multifactor authentication devices.” Thanks! (Lauren Feiner / CNBC)

Facebook has reached out to academics to gauge interest in creating an advisory board to counsel it on difficult issues related to elections. Executives have said for years that they might build various complements to the Oversight Board; this would make a logical next step. (Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac and Sheera Frenkel / New York Times)

There are growing concerns that the Taliban will have access to biometric databases built with US-made military devices that can be used to target those who provided aid to coalition forces. “One such handheld biometric device, known as the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE), was initially developed by the US government to identify insurgents.” (Vishwam Sankaran / Independent)

Lawmakers have made inquiries to Facebook, YouTube and Twitter after a man live-streamed bomb threats for hours at the Capitol last week. Based on what we know now, though, it seems like platforms handled this one fairly responsibly. (Cristiano Lima / Washington Post)

YouTube’s chief product officer wrote about the trade-offs involved in policing misinformation on the platform. “Our support of an open platform means an even greater accountability to connect people with quality information,” Neal Mohan writes. “And we will continue investing in and innovating across all our products to strike a sensible balance between freedom of speech and freedom of reach.” The company has removed 1 million COVID-related videos containing misinformation to date, he said. (YouTube)

Google argued in court that workers have no right to protest its choice of clients, including the US military. The National Labor Relations Board has accused Google of illegally firing five employees who opposed the company’s work with immigration enforcement. (Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg)

An interview with Jen Easterly, the new director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. “On election security, Easterly said CISA will likely continue the ‘Rumor Control’ initiative during the 2020 election in which the agency aggressively debunked false information that questioned the legitimacy of the vote.” (Sean Lyngaas / CyberScoop)

The government of Ethiopia is building a homegrown tech platform designed to replace Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and Zoom. Ambitious! The move comes amid frequent government shutdowns of those services related to an armed conflict with the Tigray People's Liberation Front. (Reuters)

A look at how big publishers (mis)handled a story about a doctor dying after getting a COVID vaccine earlier this year, creating the conditions for it to go viral on Facebook and other platforms. Reporters blamed Facebook for spreading the story, but media outlets need to examine their own culpability in the affair, this piece argues. (Joshua Benton / Nieman Lab)

A deep dive on the need for, and challenges to, mandating that tech platforms share data with qualified researchers. There is progress on this front in Europe, where the proposed Digital Services Act would require some data sharing, but concerns over GDPR violations remain. (Mathias Vermuelen / Knight First Amendment Institute)

A California man pled guilty to four felonies after using social engineering tactics to break into iCloud accounts and steal more than 620,000 private images. He allegedly conspired with others to search for and share nude images of young women. (Michael Finnegan / Los Angeles Times)

Korea will eliminate a 10-year-old curfew on video games for children after determining that it had no positive effect. The move comes shortly after Tencent imposed a similar curfew in fear of Chinese regulators. (Bahk Eun-ji / Korea Times)

Industry

⭐ An interview with CEO Jason Citron on the occasion of Discord raising money at a $15 billion valuation. Here’s Hannah Murphy at the Financial Times:

“If you can imagine people having their own invite-only dorm room or café, Discord is like the digital version of those third places,” Citron said.
User numbers doubled in 2020, Citron said, as gamers brought non-gaming friends on board and as lockdown restrictions forced its entertainment-starved demographic — mostly 13 to 24-year-olds — to socialise mostly online.

Joe Rogan’s influence appears to be shrinking since his podcast became a Spotify exclusive. An investigation into the bump in Twitter followers that his lesser-known guests receive shows that the increase has been halved since he moved. (Ashley Carman / The Verge)

Netflix announced “Tudum” — an onomatopoeia of the company’s logo sound — a three-hour streaming fan festival. It takes place September 25 and will feature “breaking news and ... first looks, new trailers and exclusive clips during interactive panels and conversations with the creators and stars from Netflix.” (Chaim Gartenberg / The Verge)

Facebook’s digital wallet, Novi, is ready to launch, but the company is waiting for the Diem cryptocurrency to become available before moving forward. Facebook Financial chief David Marcus also reiterated that the company is exploring how to incorporate NFTs into its products. (Kurt Wagner / Bloomberg)

YouTube forced the popular Discord bot Groovy Discord offline, which let users play music from YouTube. It had been installed on more than 16 million Discord servers, but seemed to clearly violate YouTube’s deals with record labels. Maybe Discord should spend some of that new fundraising pile on licenses. (Tom Warren / The Verge)

Margaret Mitchell, former head of the ethical AI research group at Google, joined the AI startup Hugging Face. Yes that is its real name; Hugging Face “maintains a repository where people can share and collaborate on AI models.” (Dina Bass / Bloomberg)