In the past six months, Chelsea Lynn said she made over $200,000 from OnlyFans. The platform took 20% of her earnings, or nearly $42,000, she said.
On Thursday, Lynn said she found out from a news article that OnlyFans would be banning porn.
OnlyFans said in a statement to Insider it would prohibit users from posting sexually explicit conduct starting on October 1. But the company said creators would still be able to post content containing nudity.
"The current feeling I'm getting from other creators I know and myself is both anger and confusion," Lynn, who said she was in the top 0.15% of creators, told Insider. "Sex work built OnlyFans, and now it feels like they're turning their backs on us."
OnlyFans also said it made the decision to "ensure long-term sustainability of its platform." The platform is expected to bring in $1.2 billion revenue in 2021 and has struggled to drum up investor interest because of its association with sexual content, Axios reported before the policy shift.
Insider spoke with five OnlyFans performers whose posts vary from partial nudity to sex scenes with a partner (Insider agreed to identify them by their stage names). They expressed confusion over the porn ban and pointed to contradictory statements OnlyFans had given to the press versus its creators.
Nat Cole, a sex worker who said she made a majority of her income on OnlyFans, called the company's announcement "disgusting and heartless."
"The large majority of sex workers on the platform are surviving payout to payout," Cole, 20, told Insider. "They're giving us less than two months' notice to now find a new platform to move all of our fans to in an attempt to just survive and keep paying rent."
OnlyFans told the media it was moving away from porn, then appeared to tell creators to stay away from 'untrustworthy sources'
Sex workers told Insider they felt confused by OnlyFans' vague messaging and lack of transparency with its creators surrounding the new content restrictions.
Jane Wilde, a sex worker who has been in the adult-film industry for the past five years, said she was making five figures a month on OnlyFans. Wilde, who said she was manipulated early in her career, added that she enjoyed the autonomy OnlyFans gave her and the financial security to turn down shoots that made her feel uncomfortable.
But Wilde said she struggled to get transparent policies from OnlyFans and felt frustrated OnlyFans was communicating through media statements instead of directly to creators.
Shortly after news of the porn ban broke, which was first reported by Bloomberg, OnlyFans performers said they began receiving messages from their customers asking what was going on.
As creators and the general public responded to the new guidelines, some OnlyFans performers began reaching out to the site through various support channels asking what was happening. They said OnlyFans' representatives responded with contradictory statements.
Purported messages from OnlyFans customer-support representatives have been posted to Twitter telling creators that the platform "does not plan to move away from adult content" and would have notified creators before the press.
"We kindly ask you not to believe untrustworthy sources of information," the OnlyFans Support Twitter account appeared to write in a direct message to an OnlyFans creator named Tori who has nearly 200,000 Twitter followers.
In OnlyFans' statement to media outlets, the company said creators could post nudity that does not violate the company's Acceptable Use Policy. It added that these changes were because of the requests of banking partners and payout providers, not the platform itself.
OnlyFans said it would not provide comments beyond that statement at this time.
"It's pretty troubling to me, the fact that their statements do not come directly from them, but first it was given to a media publication before any of the creators that would be affected were actually told about it," Wilde said.
Some OnlyFans creators said they believed the news media and competing companies were pushing the narrative that OnlyFans would ban porn to make money off OnlyFans' creators. Others told Insider that OnlyFans had a long history of mistreating its creators.
Jasmine, a creator on OnlyFans, told Insider the company seldom provided help with or protection from death threats, rape threats, and racist harassment she received on the platform: "Not once have they stepped in to moderate anything," Jasmine said.
Some OnlyFans creators are looking to new platforms for sex work
OnlyFans is far from the only platform that allows sex workers to earn money through subscriptions. Sites like FanCentro, PocketStars, ManyVids, AVN Stars, and IsMyGirl offer sex workers tips, take lower commissions than OnlyFans, and provide abuse protection, Mark Stenberg previously reported for Insider.
"I most likely won't continue using OnlyFans. I'm actually looking into some other sites right now," a sex worker named Angel, who said she survived off OnlyFans income in 2020, told Insider. "I did really enjoy the layout and the way OnlyFans worked, so I'll miss that, but I'm hoping I'll find a similar site which is better."
Marginalized-worker-friendly digital platforms have a harder time finding mainstream popularity, according to Raven Maragh-Lloyd, an assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis and the author of the upcoming book "Reshaping Black Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age."
Black creators, who have long created popular content for sites like Twitter and TikTok, made Black Planet to ensure marginalized workers could be at the forefront of the business. But the platform has not gained mainstream popularity, Maragh-Lloyd said.
Jasmine said she felt wary of OnlyFans' competitors because sex workers could end up in the same situation down the road.
"From what I see, the profiles of these companies are all more or less the same: It's founded by a white man who does nothing with sex work but wants to profit off of that," Jasmine said. "I don't think that misalignment will ever be something that profits sex workers in the long run."
Platforms created on Blockstack, a decentralized computing system designed to give creators and users ownership over their data, might be the key to giving sex workers better control over their content, said Arun Sundararajan, a professor of technology, operations, and statistics at New York University.
Angel and other OnlyFans performers who spoke with Insider said OnlyFans customers should keep up with their favorite creators on platforms like Twitter, which allows explicit content, and Instagram, which doesn't, until sex workers can find new online homes.
But the prospect of new adult sites or platforms for sex-work subscriptions didn't take away from the sense of betrayal that OnlyFans creators expressed to Insider.
"OnlyFans will never be able to disconnect their image and name from being an adult-content site," Cole said. "They're damaging the lives of so many people without care and will probably be damaging their site forever, too."
