OnlyFans accused of conspiring to blacklist rivals
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"OnlyFans has been accused of conspiring to blacklist the social media accounts of adult performers working for rival websites, BBC News has learned."
There was one point in the article I forgot to mention that really highlights the importance of social media in this line of work. It was related to Content Providers getting shadow-banned and seeing a detrimental fall in income.
"In recent years, performers using Instagram to promote and link to their adult websites have complained that even though they have not broken the site's community guidelines - they have been served with violation notifications and had posts removed. The subsequent loss of visibility and promotion of these accounts became known as a "shadowban".
For performers, it remains a mystery to what extent any action taken against accounts was because of specific policy or targeted moderation of their content.
"We were seeing mass deletions without any real clear reason as to what was happening or why," says Alana Evans, president of a group which represents performers - the Adult Performers Actors Guild.
She says she has seen performers fall into severe financial difficulty with some even left homeless."
"In recent years, performers using Instagram to promote and link to their adult websites have complained that even though they have not broken the site's community guidelines - they have been served with violation notifications and had posts removed. The subsequent loss of visibility and promotion of these accounts became known as a "shadowban".....
One model, who we're calling Camila to protect her identity, used to have millions of followers on her Instagram account - which is verified, similar to a blue tick on Twitter. She says the removal of much of her content and eventual closure of her account had a "devastating" impact on her.
Camila's posts regularly feature her in a bikini or underwear. Typically, she would accompany her photos with links to an adult website - an OnlyFans' rival - which hosted videos that users needed to pay to watch.
In October 2018, she began receiving violation notifications for content removed by Instagram. Soon, posts started to be taken down regularly. Some of the photos removed were mundane images - including tourist snaps when she was fully clothed.
"They started to get deleted several times a day and then several posts at a time," she says.
BBC News has learned that Camila's Instagram account status - only visible by engineering staff - was changed to "critical". This meant it was not promoted as prominently any more, leading to reduced visibility.
"My page was slowly dying and losing followers because posts were getting deleted. It means nobody sees me," she says.
Camila says she continually appealed against the removal of her pictures but only received an automated response. At one point, even her ability to appeal to Instagram was removed, she says. Her account was later closed completely.
Camila says she used to earn at least $50,000 (£36,000) a month from performing on the adult site but now makes a fraction of that amount without her Instagram account driving traffic to it."
These timelines shown in the article where content providers were impacted seems to have been before OF blew up in 2020. It must be exacerbated now, the impact of social media and shadow banning in addition to the saturated market in terms of potential downward pressure on earnings.
