When OnlyFans declared on August 19, 2021, that it would soon ban porn from its platform, it seemed an unusual, even baffling, move. The subscription and pay-per-view service is home to a range of content creators, including fitness experts, chefs, celebrities, and musicians. But it ultimately became a household phenomenon by connecting audiences directly to porn creators for everything from lingerie shoots to hard-core fetish clips. Following the ban announcement, creators flocked to social media in confusion and concern. Memes predicted a swift demise for the company betraying the very user base that had made it famous. Less than a week later, OnlyFans rolled back its decision. As one Twitter user put it: “banning porn? psh, those were OnlyPlans.” It seemed a win for sex workers, but the dust-up hints at a more troubling story: the routine financial discrimination against millions of precarious workers.
In an interview with the Financial Times, OnlyFans founder and CEO Tim Stokely blamed the chaos on corporate struggles, including the frequent refusal by major banks to process its transactions or host associated accounts. Such obstacles have fed the platform’s anxieties about its long-term profitability. Despite a user base of over 130 million, OnlyFans has failed to attract venture capital. Its association with adult content would appear to be scaring off investors and financial institutions, likely thanks to American evangelical lobby groups that have succeeded in conflating legal pornography with sex trafficking and child abuse through a number of baseless claims. These religious crusaders generate op-eds, organize social media campaigns, fund antiporn documentaries, and, most recently, have put intense pressure on payment processors to financially discriminate against porn performers.
