OnlyFans bans sexually explicit videos and posts

OnlyFans is banning pornographic posts, it has said.

The subscription platform has become famous in large part because it allows creators of adult content to share videos with relatively few restrictions.

But such videos will now be banned, in a decision OnlyFans said it had taken to “ensure the long-term sustainability of the platform”, it told The Independent.

Posts containing nudity will still be allowed, so long as they comply with OnlyFans rules. But those rules will now specifically ban “any content containing sexually explicit conduct”.

OnlyFans said it had taken the decision “to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers”. It did not give any information about which companies had made those requests.

The announcement came only hours after Axios reported that the company had run into trouble securing investment, despite its very rapid growth, because of the prevalence of adult content on the platform. A number of venture capital firms have rules explicitly banning apps built to distribute sexually explicit content, the site reported.

The same report also showed the vast financial growth of the company, which it said had paid out billions of dollars to creators already and expected to grow rapidly. It is not clear how much of that revenue came from pornography and adult content, and Axios reported that no reference to explicit content is made in the company’s pitch to investors.

OnlyFans said it was committed to ensuring that the creators who rely on the platform were helped through the ban. “We will be sharing more details in the coming days and we will actively support and guide our creators through this change in content guidelines,” it said in a statement.

The new rule will go into effect from 1 October.

At the same time as it made its announcement, the company released its first monthly transparency report, covering July 2021. The decision to release the reports was part of “our commitment to safety and transparency”, OnlyFans said.

OnlyFans has spent recent months looking to promote the variety of “safe for work” content that is offered on its platform. In March, it announced a prize fund to highlight the work of musicians on the app, and this week it announced it was launching a new streaming platform and app called OFTV, which will be free and will offer only PG-rated content.

Earlier this year, OnlyFans chief executive Tim Stokely told The Independent that while the site had often been associated with pornographic content in its early days, it was now growing beyond that.

“We are often associated with adult content, I think, because you have to be over the age of 18 to use the platform. And all the content is behind a paywall. That allowed us to have more liberal content policies,” Mr Stokely said.

“We found that creators from the adult industry really embraced the platform early on. But the content on the platform has really evolved.”

The fastest-growing types of content are “fitness, music and more recently fashion”, he said, pointing to the success of musical artists such as DJ Khaled.