- OnlyFans announced Thursday it would ban "sexually-explicit conduct" starting October 1.
- The ban has caused confusion and anger among many sex workers who rely on OnlyFans for income.
- 3 influencers who spoke to Insider said sex workers would be hurt more than they would by the move.
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Ava Louise was disappointed but not suprised to hear that OnlyFans was banning porn.
"We've known this is coming for a while," Louise, who is signed to Bella Thorne's OnlyFans agency Content X, told Insider. Louise, who has over 300,000 Instagram followers and is known for wild viral stunts, considers herself on the influencer side of OnlyFans performers.
Not only is Louise signed to a big-name agency that she feels will protect her from OnlyFans' move away from "sexually-explicit conduct," but the content she posts to OnlyFans is less extreme than what many sex workers post.
"I'm not doing porn, the majority of influencers aren't on there doing porn," Louise, who makes five figures a month on OnlyFans, said. "So I don't think it's going to hurt us that badly, but I'm worried for sex workers."
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A post shared by Ava Louise (@avalouiise)
On Thursday, OnlyFans began telling news outlets like Bloomberg — which first reported the story — and Insider that it would prohibit posting hardcore porn starting October 1, 2021. However, the statement from OnlyFans says creators will still be able to post themselves nude.
Louise and two other influencers told Insider that they would continue to use OnlyFans to sell sexy pictures and videos, but expected sex workers who post more pornographic content to have to migrate to other platforms.
The divide between influencers and sex workers on OnlyFans has been a point of tension since celebrities like Thorne and influencers like Tana Mongeau and Corinna Kopf began starting pages and making millions. Now, some sex workers say OnlyFans is "turning its back" on them, and some influencers are speaking out against the platform too.
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"We're going to be fine," Louise said of influencers. "I have friends on there who are doing porn, doing sex work, doing it to survive. This is how they're making a living and they're going to be hurt, and that makes me upset."
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Influencers began using OnlyFans in 2020, and many of them are disappointed in its move away from porn
Ally Hardesty has been making YouTube videos since 2015, and she has over 350,000 subscribers. In 2020, Hardesty joined OnlyFans to post exclusive content. As an influencer, Hardesty told Insider that she doesn't expect to be personally affected by the porn ban.
"It's hard not to feel really guilty for that, because that is not the luxury that most people have, having a large platform on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok," Hardesty said. "Most of the people who helped to build OnlyFans are sex workers. Now it's obvious they are trying to rebrand to more advertiser-friendly content and cater to influencers who are not doing porn."
A post shared by ALLY HARDESTY🐊✨ (@allygatorrz)
Caroline Calloway, a writer with 675,000 Instagram followers, said she made six figures posting topless photos on OnlyFans. Calloway has also posed topless on Twitter and posted excerpts from boudoir shoots on Instagram, but she told Insider that OnlyFans was the best option for her to monetize nudes.
"Whether it's sexually explicit content or just explicit in terms of nudity, these platforms have slowly tightened their reigns on what they're allowing with their content," Calloway said.
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Calloway predicts that OnlyFans creators who are most affected by the porn ban will continue to use their OnlyFans accounts to drive traffic to a platform where they can post more explicit content.
"Whether it be a new OnlyFans-esque site that pops up where you can post these videos or whether they drive traffic to someplace like PornHub, people will just use existing social media platforms to drive traffic to the places where they make more money," she told Insider.
A post shared by Caroline Calloway (@carolinecalloway)
Influencer Corinna Kopf, who has 6 million Instagram followers, tweeted "shame on OF." While Kopf said she wouldn't be affected by the change, she said that the platform had "directly attacked" sex workers. Kopf even suggested that sex workers join the platform Fansly instead.
"OnlyFans isn't going to be able to survive this, at all," Louise told Insider. "These tech empires hate women and OnlyFans is jumping on that bandwagon because they want to appeal to these kinds of investors."
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