Yesterday the internet exploded with the news from Bloomberg that OnlyFans will stop allowing explicit content on its platform. This created an enormous amount of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) by many content creators and for good reason in the last 2 years during the pandemic OF became there main source of income.
So how realistic is that at some point in the future adult content will be banned?
Lets start with the company OnlyFans is owned by Fenix International Limited and has it official HQ in London/UK but most of the work is done in California/USA. As many new companies on the internet it starts with a business idea and technology. Lots of technology OF was all about growth and needed all hands on deck to scale the operation to handle all it new users.
Now the technology part is more or less alright you see the focus switching on business growth. How can they make more money. Of course the adult industry was the early adapter and OF welcomed the industry with open arms in its initial phase. Now its revenues is $390 million (source Financial Times) and it needs to tap a different source then the adult industry and the kinky influencers for it next jump to a billion. On top of that the authorities are looking into the legal aspects.
In the old days of the internet it was common that a company only has to comply to the laws of the country where it was hosted. That is long gone and now as a company you need to comply to all the laws in the countries you are offering your services. If you operate globally it means you need to comply to all laws. This is of course impossible so you see technology platforms first focus on their main markets and if they run into trouble disable their platform in these countries.
For OF the target country is the United States of America. This means that they have to comply to all FOSTA-SESTA rules. But also all legislation that is targeted to BDSM (e.g. you can’t give written consent to abuse) So yes this will reduce the allowed content on OF for many creators.
Next is the financial pictures. OF is fully dependent on Mastercard/Visa that also have to comply to USA laws. On top of that there main concern is high risk transactions. Many of these adult platforms are used for money laundering. Also OF is under investigation by many authorities for enabling this. All sort of new KYC rules (Kown Your Customer) will be enforced and that is for many content creators and their customers not always so easy. But there is no way back if OF wants to keep on operating it has to comply.
The above story is true for any content platform on the internet. So yes I believe that slowly OF will have to change it general terms and condition to comply with legislation in different countries and even more for the payment providers. Although we know that if you make enough money you can make a deal with them as many of the largest adult sites have proven. The best way out is to split the platform for OF a strict adult part where you have to proof your identity and all content has to be made according to the USA adult content standards. The other part will be an open platform where anybody can follow its favorite celebrity and pay something extra for exclusive content.
My personal view and advice to the Mistresses now on Only Fans. It is time to slowly move away don’t abandon your subscribers but tease them with more explicit content on your new platform of choice. When you create content always store the original on your local computer/cloud so you can re-use the same content on the new platform.
It looks like the new platform of choice is loyalfans, please follow my Mistress @madamecaramel yes also this platform will have to comply when it become a billion dollar company but till then we can make and spend money with them.
After thought:
Is there a solution. In the last few years we have seen many startups that issued an ICO to fix the payment problem. In theory that is of course through but you have to allow people to buy these tokens and that is not easy without a credit card. Yes you could create an ERC-20 token and use a service like pancakeswap but that might be a bridge to far for many people. I do see the solution in the use of crypto but I would use a standard token like Bitcoin but more likely a cardano token. Because these tokens are used by everybody and can not be individual banned that should fix the payment problem.
For the hosting of the platform I think you have to really embrace to country laws. Make sure that all content is correctly marked so you can create a mix for each individual user based on their preferences and local laws. I would make use of deep learning algorithms to find illegal content and protect the platform. I still think the internet allows enough freedom and technology to can do all. Protect what we love and still gives us freedom to express our kinks. Who is with me!
