OnlyOop: BBC investigation(s) likely catalyst for OnlyFans changes, expose moderation issues

[scullies]

earlier today we had a post about the drastic change in content parameters coming to OnlyFans (OF).

[tl;dr if you missed it]
once considered a major outlet for sex workers to share and be paid for their work and now a platform hosting A to D list celebs, the service announced that starting in October they would no longer host sexually explicit content (tho they would

Comments

[shastafay]

A lot of the mainstream press is misreporting the reason behind the OnlyFans porn ban, linking it to an unrelated article about trying to get more funding.

The reason actually given: the MasterCard rule changes prompted by Exodus Cry's campaign against Pornhub. https://t.co/xZOxdBnLfu
- (Gustavo Turner intensifies) (@GustavoTurnerX) August 19, 2021

[winter_lace]

Isn’t exodus cry some evangelical organization that secured the replacement of AIDS programs for sex workers for abstinence only programs or what that some shit that lodged itself in my brain from a fever dream?

[shastafay]

that's the one lol

[scullies]

gotta be honest, read two articles by this dude and don’t feel like they add much to the conversation. he does a great job laying out the long and damaging legacy of anti-porn / anti-sw movements and then it all gets muddled. a couple passing mentions of the content moderation issues that were present at pornhub and a lot of skirting that their - and OnlyFans’ - objectively broken systems that they failed to fix for YEARS are what left them especially vulnerable to be targeted by both fundie orgs and manipulative think pieces.

[shastafay]

idk i don't even follow the dude, just embedded that tweet bc other sw's are sharing it re: media's misrepresentation of the reasons for OF's change of policy

[laura_luvage]

The likes of Mastercard are doing this because they don't want to be complicit in child rape, beastality, drug trafficking and money laundering which threatens their business. Financial services don't give a shit about 'morality', there's a number of legal cases surrounding the likes of PornHub and OnlyFans and they know it will impact their image to be connected. If no one was making a fuss they wouldn't be doing anything, plenty of dodgy sites, including pornographic sites, they still allow to use their services.

Many of the pro-pornography/prostitution sites are trying to claim it's about 'morality' because there's a lot less sympathy for these sites closing down when it's because the sites failed to do basic measures to protect children from abuse.

[shastafay]

yeah, mastercard's new rules would basically require OF to not only fully verify every user/person who appears in every adult video, but review all posted content before publication, including real-time review of livestreams. ofc OF decided that's too time consuming & just not worth it, so they just went and culled all explicit sexual content from the site.

ofc it should also be added that the famous article that (rightly) exposed pornhub's sketchy practices & supposedly kickstarted all this was heavily filtered through an evangelical lens, as one of its main sources belongs to exodus cry (noted anti-sex, anti-homosexuality, anti-aids funding and, naturally, anti-semitic christian group).

so behind all this there's clearly a huge christian fundamentalist propaganda push, yet liberals are still gushing over the supposed good that will come out of deplatforming sex workers from a comparatively safe (however flawed) site during a pandemic, lol.

[laura_luvage]

The likes of OF have been shown to continue to allow child abuse to be uploaded to the site, as explained in the BBC article, and have been called out on it multiple times and have continued to follow policies that allow this to continue. They are actively complicit in child abuse. People are happy that an organisation that have made money off children being sexually abused are facing consquences. I've not seen any 'liberals' happy about the consquences for adult users losing their income during a pandemic, the blame lies solely on an organisation that was profiting off vulnerable people relying on their website for their income while also profiting off of child sex abuse and rather than doing something about it decided to fuck over their users.

Exodus Cry have been heavily involved, but as I said before Mastercard and the like don't care about morality, they don't want to lose money and would've stuck with OF and PornHub if they had actually bothered to do something about the child abuse on their sites.

[shastafay]

"I've not seen any 'liberals' happy about the consquences for adult users losing their income during a pandemic" there's several captain-save-a-ho on this & the previous post's comment sections alone, and that's leaving twitter entirely out of the equation.

also, mastercard is v much a peripheral issue, the main point is that OF wasn't interested in following thru with the time & money consuming set of rules that mastercard - for whatever purely pragmatic financial reasons - insisted they apply in order to effectively filter out minors, revenge porn, etc.

the point is v much that OF took the easy way out at the expense of - who else? - the adult sex workers who made the site grow & whose livelihoods depended on it.

[laura_luvage]

There's a difference between being against the sex/porn industry and and being happy that people are going to lose their income. I've only just seen the previous post and only one person is 'gloating' in any terms, the rest are pointing out how sex/porn industry relies on the oppression of women and marganalised people being exploited and that OF actively promoted itself to teenagers under false pretences.

[shastafay]

i said "gushing over the supposed good that will come out of", bc that's what i've read: people treating sw's as both expendable & lacking in agency/autonomy, and the deplatforming as a "lesser evil". they're the faceless expendable victims among the good old 'think of the children' rhetoric that's uncritically applauding the move.

[laura_luvage]

One less place that hosts child abuse is pretty good, it's not good that others have become collateral but I've seen plenty of people acting that children being abused is acceptable 'collateral' for adults to keep earning money via OF.

[shastafay]

the fact that so many ppl are so willing to accept the "collateral" is the problem tho, it really showcases how expendable sw are for the vast majority of ppl. like, instead of criticizing OF for being unwilling to take real steps that would effectively ban child abuse / revenge porn / etc from their platform - ironically, like the above mentioned rules required by mastercard - ppl are just celebrating "one less place that hosts child abuse" knee-jerk style & consequences be damned. that is quite literally "gushing over the supposed good that will come out of" at the expense of sw.