Blame game
OnlyFans founder says porn ban was caused by a crackdown from banks
“The change in policy, we had no choice — the short answer is banks,” said Tim Stokely in an interview with the Financial Times.
OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely has come out on the defensive following last week’s surprising and controversial move to ban sexually explicit content — the very thing that made the platform popular in the first place.
The initial announcement caused some confusion, as OnlyFans was slow to confirm the update through official channels, and its new policy stated that “sexually explicit conduct” would be banned, but nudes could remain. OnlyFans has since confirmed the policy change and clarified that the content it’s banning is mostly anything displaying sexual intercourse or other similar acts.
That’s, of course, a big blow for the sex workers who found in OnlyFans a way to make money from their work that was safe and even professionalized with modern tools like multimedia and tiered subscriptions. There are big questions about whether they’ll be successful under the new rules.
Turning the screws — OnlyFans has been excoriated in the fallout, with people saying that the company is turning its back on sex workers in the interest of cleaning up its reputation as it seeks new investors. Stokely denied the allegation and said the blame is unfair, however. According to him, OnlyFans had no choice but to ban porn because it was getting shut down by banking providers, who would “cite reputational risk and refuse our business.”
Among the banks that have cut off OnlyFans, according to Stokely, is Bank of New York Mellon, which facilitated transfers between OnlyFans’ bank and the bank accounts of creators. Other banks including JPMorgan Chase and U.K.-based Metro Bank have also been aggressive in closing accounts of sex workers, “or any business that supports sex workers,” Stokely told the Financial Times.
Sex work stigma — OnlyFans isn’t the first company to face challenges facilitating sex work online. Pornhub last year lost the support of major payment providers following a New York Times investigation which found the site was plagued with child pornography and non-consensual footage. Banks don’t want to be affiliated with illegal content and have implemented new strict rules for adult content companies. Mastercard, for instance, is implementing a new policy that requires, among other things, that all people depicted in content are age and identity verified.
Stokely said that other platforms like Facebook deal with similar content concerns, and that’s why he feels OnlyFans is unfairly being targeted. The platform already requires users to be verified and their content is behind a paywall.
The NYT investigation was motivated in part by Exodus Cry, a non-profit organization that’s “committed to abolishing sex trafficking and the commercial sex industry.” The opinion that all sex work is bad is a controversial one, as supporters of the industry argue that sex work will always exist, and cracking down on it through the legal system will simply push workers into the fringe where they’re even less safe. OnlyFans offered a safe way to perform this work.
One option for OnlyFans could be to following in Pornhub’s footsteps and begin accepting cryptocurrencies. It has said it’s looking for solutions to the porn ban. But it couldn’t come fast enough for the sex workers left out in the cold.
