A few days ago when OnlyFans announced that it would be banning adult content, many people were understandably upset and in despair. So many of us now own houses, cars and have a bright future to look forward to because of our OnlyFans accounts.
As soon as I heard this announcement I was skeptical. On April 20th I tweeted “My OnlyFans theory: this is a fake-out by OnlyFans and MasterCard, to cause a public outcry in order to demand that adult content on OnlyFans be accepted by the big banks. The big banks want to take the money. They just can’t until public support is behind it.”
Over the last few days, I made at least 6 tweets predicting that OnlyFans would soon reverse their porn ban.
It seems that both OnlyFans and the big banks are being pressured, and by the usual suspects of anti-porn lobbyists. Without overwhelming public support for adult content, the big banks can’t get fully behind it.
Obviously, OnlyFans pretended to be banning adult content, so that millions of xxx content creators would rise up, and LOBBY against this ban. Media was also hugely favorable to OnlyFans. OnlyFans knew that would be the case and they needed that push to successfully fight back with whatever they were dealing with behind the scenes.
I’m told that the free speech coalition lobbies on behalf of the porn industry but I’m not convinced, that is specific enough to the new and emerging content creators industry, which I would argue is different enough from what has traditionally been considered the porn industry, to warrant it’s own special considerations.
While we will likely never see the agreements made between the banks and OnlyFans, as a result of this fake-out it is likely that OnlyFans has secured a deal with the banks, which strongly favors adult content over the interests of anti-porn lobbyists. In just 3 business days since the announcement of the porn ban OnlyFans, They were able to secure a deal with the banks they found favorable enough to publicly reverse their position. That tells me that the banks were not even arguing very strongly against porn but rather the banks were being held hostage by the anti-porn lobbyists who are a small but vocal group. Prior to this announcement, there was not enough opposition to the anti-porn lobbyists to stop them. For the time being, we have won and OnlyFans always knew this would happen which is why they took this wild gamble instead of acquiescing to these zealots. The only way to achieve this breaking point in negotiations was to show that they were committed to walking away from whatever deal was on the table at the time.
We, content creators, are a large, moneyed, and vocal group in our own right. We need to accurately identify our enemy. It’s not OnlyFans. It’s not the banks. It’s the anti-porn lobbyists who are pressuring the banks to come after our industry.
Since we do not have a creators lobbyist to counter them we have little to no voice in these closed door discussions where the banks get pressured into cracking down on adult related businesses.
The banks would happily process payments for snuff films if the public would allow it!
Money has no morals and the people in charge of money are typically immoral beyond your wildest dreams.
For now, we should continue to unofficially lobby just as we have done this past week. APAG union and others did an incredible job of organizing and getting our urgent messages out to OnlyFans, MasterCard, and the anti-porn people. There is no doubt that this helped but there is also no doubt in my mind this is exactly what OnlyFans was expecting to happen when they announced their porn ban.
The future looks bright for OnlyFans even though if it seems a bit murky right now. We are at a crossroads moment where OnlyFans is truly poised for total mainstream acceptance now that the banks are behind them. I expect OnlyFans to double in popularity within the next two years.
As I always expected this to be the case, I have not made any contingency plans. I am all in on OnlyFans. There is no other site that could replace it at the moment. There are a lot of sites that have sprung up to try and take its place but it remains to be seen if any of those platforms can overtake OnlyFans. None stand out to me as obvious frontrunners.
I suspect that no site will replace or overtake OnlyFans until a platform comes along that figures out how to help its creators get fans. The way uber connects drivers with riders. A platform that could effectively connect creators with customers will overtake all others.
If OnlyFans wants to stay ahead of the competition they will start to embrace their reputation as the top xxx platform for amateur content by finding tangible ways to help their content creators grow large and legitimate fanbases.
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Two facets of this story are being ignored. First is the association of OnlyFans with Russian criminals, primarily Leonid Radvinsky (the actual owner of OnlyFans). Second is the ongoing litigation against Mindgeek. The financial industry dislikes exposure to money laundering & lawsuits more than it likes cozying up to evangelicals.
OnlyFans did successfully shame the banks, long enough for the New York Times and a couple of other old-school media outlets to come in like a knight in shining armor to write positive stories. But, the “deal” that OnlyFans secured in order to make this announcement couldn’t have been much, just enough to undo the previous stories. The rules that MasterCard have already announced haven’t gone anywhere (especially the onerous moderation & “brand damage” provisions), and such regulation is likely to expand to other companies. Note that these rules are very ambiguous: that’s how corporations work; leave enough wiggle room in order to do whatever they want later.
As a case study, look at millionaire Twitch streamers who have been banned by the platform…many of whom were never told why they were banned, because Amazon doesn’t have to–they own the platform. There’s a good saying from the Internet era: “If you don’t own the platform, you don’t own a business.” Now, these streamers are living on saved principal while they vainly grasp at lost ephemeral fame.
Ultimately, the financial industry hasn’t forgotten its exposure, to criminal & civil liability, rather than as moral arbiters, and will likely continue to choke OnlyFans quietly & slowly, one refused charge at a time, as MasterCard has already been doing for almost a year.
OK…one more time:
1. By “big banks,” the writer (who I never heard of) should know the story, and it centers around MasterCard and Pershing Square Capital owner Bill Ackman. The article in Institutional Investor summarized it pretty well, try there. Then we can proceed.
2. I see another comment above about money laundering and organized crime. If you don’t think these groups launder tons of cashish through OF and all the various “chat” services, you’re a fool. I won’t speak to the details, but anyone who claims to be “in the biz” should remember that OC has more or less run the porn business for decades since before most of the degenerates who read this site were born.
3. I actually stopped reading mostly around “lobbyists.” The lolz factor in pretending porn will ever have federal, let alone state lobbyists, is farcical to the point of absurdity. Anybody remember when porn “lobbying” consisted of Bill Margold and Kat Sunlove driving to Sacramentucky once a year to talk to the one or two state legislators who would hear them. And have it explained once again that any acknowledgement of the porn industry would be a political death sentence. And that porn was only legal in California after the Miller case. Porn as a business is still so decentralized and distrustful of its own (rightfully, I’d say) that lobbying would just be a bunch of aging has-beens going to ask Devin Nunes (or his mom) for some love. Who you gonna send? Alana Evans? Stormy Daniels? Maybe you can scare up Sharon Mitchell again.
4. Porn somehow manages to be a resilient business. It adapts and changes to the times. It adapted to Ed Meese and his commission. It adapted to the Betamax. It adapted to the internet. It adapted to the downfall of iBill. It’s kinda-sorta adapting to tube sites and piracy (hear the name Nate Glass any more?). Give it time.
Porn people yearned for life in the “mainstream” for years. Now you have it. As Kobe would say, time to put your big boy pants on.
5.