Onlyfans, Porn ban and ensuing Chaos

Porn traditionally has been a risky business from the financial institutions’ standpoint, and they often pressurize the sites that host pornographic content to stick to only have legal and consensual sex work but truth be told, these sites do have pretty loose moderation and hence leave a lot of illegal, violent content floating around.

Pornhub deja vu

What happened to Pornhub some months back happened to Onlyfans some days back. There was increasing pressure from banks, payments processors like Mastercard, Visa to ban porn on the platform that is equivalent to movie theatres banning movies.

Porn: Heart of Onlyfans

Porn has made Onlyfans what it is today, the valuation of the startup stands well above $1 Billion with a user base of 150 Million people globally and 2 Million creators making money off the platform via tips paid by the users to watch exclusive content.

Creators rake in close to $300 Million every month from the platform. All in all, Onlyfans has made an incredible ecosystem around itself.

Banning porn comes along with a backlash

With the ban, Onlyfans seemed to turn its back on to the people whom it provided livelihood back in the pandemic. When the world was under the rage of the pandemic, many people turned to sites like Onlyfans for entertainment, and on the other hand, those who lost jobs found a saving grace.

There was an obvious backlash from the sex workers’ community.

Ban reversed

In a totally surprising move, the site reversed its decision of banning porn off the platform indefinitely. The entire fiasco made Onlyfans one of the most popular startups in the public consciousness.

Wrapping up

Investors and institutions alike treat sex work as an unsafe and high-risk business to get into, hence the creators will have to diversify their presence on other sites too rather than relying on one whose future is uncertain.

Manvinder

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