Why is the creator of OnlyFans keeping the app NSFW?

Things have been weird if you’ve been watching the drama over the OnlyFans app this past week? Month? Year? Time is meaningless to us so we have no clue either way. But, yes, the drama over the OnlyFans app deciding to ban sexually explicit content, which is pretty much the bread & butter of OnlyFans, has definitely been shocking to the creators & users of its services.

Now, however, it looks like the app is reversing its decision to ban sexually explicit content on the platform. So a double reversal? Triple reversal? Is this like a whole double cross or triple cross situation? Either way, it’s definitely something that we weren’t sure was coming. Usually when platforms ban sex, they tend to stick to their guns over it despite the detriment to the website/app. (Say hi, Tumblr!) 

So why have OnlyFans reversed its decision? Why did they even make the decision to ban sexually explicit content in the first place? What does this mean for the future of the app? Let’s dive into what we know about the recent decision to reverse the porn ban on OnlyFans.

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.

— OnlyFans (@OnlyFans) August 25, 2021

What we know so far

Ah, Twitter, you always keep us to date. Today (August 25th), OnlyFans posted the above tweet to its account, which said the following “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.”

This comes a day after an article appeared in the Financial Times with OnlyFans CEO Tim Stokely who said that the long & short of the ban came down to the banks. He said, “The change in policy, we had no choice — the short answer is banks.” He then named three major banks who refused service because of the “reputational risk” with the app: Bank of New York Mellon, Metro Bank, and JPMorgan Chase.

This, of course, threatened the app’s ability to pay the OnlyFans creators. For some, they count on that money as either a salary or extra income depending on their popularity on the app. Before Stokely came out to say that it was the banks, people thought that payment processors like MasterCard or Visa were to blame for the new NSFW restriction on OnlyFans.

What does this mean?

OnlyFans creators are now faced with a choice, to be honest. Many of them have shifted to a SFW content model and deleted old NSFW content from their OnlyFans page. While others, meanwhile, have shifted their subscriber base to different platforms instead. Now, well, they have a choice to either stay with what they’re doing or go back to the OnlyFans app.

More to the point, these creators, who are sex workers, have to decide to stay with OnlyFans, who seemingly ditched them when things got too tough for their business model. To be fair, creators of sexual content have been burned before when websites such as Tumblr, Patreon, and eBay have done their own porn purges in the past. So the reluctance is definitely understandable.

To which we say to others, haven’t you heard of Avenue Q? The Internet is for porn, friends. Either way, if this leads to content creators on the OnlyFans app to staying or ditching permanently, that’s something we’ll need to keep track of over the following days & weeks. 

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What do you think about the OnlyFans app reversing its porn ban decision? Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below!