Adult content creators blast company’s flip-flop on porn ban

Content subscription service OnlyFans announced Wednesday that it was dropping its plan to ban sexually explicit content on its platform. The reversal comes a week after the London-based company announced proposed changes to “evolve” its content, which included a ban on pornography. Adult content creators on the site reacted with cautious optimism to the news that they will not be banned from the platform.

Video transcript

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JIMMY KIMMEL: Earlier today, OnlyFans announced that it's going to block all X-rated content starting in October.

- Aww!

JIMMY KIMMEL: [SPUTTERS] What? This would be like Playboy only printing the articles.

- Now, the company's reversing that position and saying in a tweet this morning, "Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard. We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community. We have suspended the planned October 1 policy change."

TYOMI MORGAN: My name is Tyomi Morgan. People online know me as "Glamazon Tyomi," and I have been creating on OnlyFans since January 2019. OnlyFans was the only space that really supported me and gave me, like, an opportunity to express myself and make money doing it. And so it was really like a saving grace, because my world was on fire at the time, and it was just easy. It was easy to sign up. It was easy to get started. It made sense.

The news that OnlyFans was banning sexually explicit content, I wasn't surprised, because we had heard it through the ethers already that something was coming, and we had already seen what happened with Pornhub. And if you are a sex worker, if you are an erotic content creator, this is not something that's new. Like I said, I was-- I've been banned by several online processors. I've been banned by email delivery services. I've been banned by certain store platforms. So I just want people to understand, like, yeah, this is one thing that we do, and it's not the only thing that we do. And we do it because we love it and we're free to do it.

- ABC News has investigated concerns under 18 on using OnlyFans. We've been told some are making thousands of pounds selling explicit images.

HASAN "KING NOIRE" SALAAM: My name is King Noire. I have been on OnlyFans since 2017. I'm an adult content creator, but also, I own my own company. I think that it's really important that it's not about trying to shut people down; it should be about trying to make people safe. Sex workers are not the people who are the problem. The problem is people who are exploiting people and sex traffickers. And that's going to happen whether porn is in existence or not.

So really if you want to eradicate what the problems are and the dangers are to humanity, then you should be going after the people who are doing sex trafficking. You should be going after the people who are sexually abusing people. And really, if those people cared about that, you'd see it more reflected in the laws, not just them doing something performative to go after sex workers.

I've been involved in sex work since I was legally able to do so. It was something that I initially started doing because I had to pay bills. I had to take care of my family. I had a sick parent that I needed to make sure that I could take care of them and the household with.

And I had left for a little while but got back into it because I wanted to start my own company that actually portrayed Black love, passion, fetishes, kink, and all this in a way that was actually respectful, and held this up, and showed us for the beauty in which we are. I got into OnlyFans in 2017 because I was looking for a way that I could get even closer to my fans.

You know, I have a website, and it's like a membership site, so there's not as much interaction on a daily basis. And OnlyFans kind of provided that, you know, your fans want to ask you a question. Your fans want to get a picture and see what you're doing. I think OnlyFans owes something to the people who brought it to the world.

Beyonce never would have dropped the bar about OnlyFans if sex work wasn't setting that trend. Sex work sets trends. That gets rippled through music and fashion.