OnlyFans dropped plans to ban pornography from its service, less than a week after the U.K. content-creator subscription site had announced the change citing the need to comply with policies of banking partners.
On Wednesday, the company said it “secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community,” suggesting that it has new agreements with banks to pay OnlyFans’ content creators, including those who share sexually explicit material.
“Thank you to everyone for making your voices heard. We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change,” the company said in a tweet Wednesday.
“OnlyFans stands for inclusion and we will continue to provide a home for all creators,” the company said.
So was this all much ado about nothing?
OnlyFans may have been able to resolve its conflict with banks — some of which had refused to do business with the site — by going public with the issue. OnlyFans founder and CEO Tim Stokely put the blame for the porn ban on banks in an interview with the Financial Times published Aug. 24, saying that banks including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon and the U.K.’s Metro Bank had cut off OnlyFans’ ability to pay creators.
The decision by OnlyFans to ban porn had infuriated sex workers who have relied on the site to support themselves. Founded in 2016, the site claims to have more than 130 million registered users and over 2 million creators.
While OnlyFans grew to popularity largely based on its porn-friendly policy, the company has been looking to reach wider audiences. For example, this month it officially launched OFTV, a streaming app that excludes sexually explicit content, in part to obtain distribution on platforms that disallow porn. OFTV is available on Android, iOS, Apple TV, Roku, Amazon’s Fire TV, Android TV and Samsung Smart TVs.
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