OnlyFans Throws The Open Internet Under The Bus

Surprises

from the only-regulatory-moats dept

It’s always disappointing when an internet company that should know better decides to throw the open internet it relies on under the bus.

You would think that a site like OnlyFans would know better. You expect this sorta thing from Meta or Google or Netflix, which have reached a size where they’re more willing to compromise with open internet principles in order to help build themselves a politically convenient compliance nightmare for smaller competitors.

But you would have thought OnlyFans was still new enough that it wouldn’t join those pulling up the ladder behind them. After all, it’s run into its own struggles with what happens when moralizing politicians try to stifle the open internet.

Apparently, though, the company doesn’t care much to support the open internet.

The Economist recently had a big story about attempts to regulate speech online. The piece is not a bad summary of how politicians everywhere are trying to become the speech police. There’s some talk of Section 230, the various dumb state laws about content moderation, the DSA in the EU, attempts in Turkey and Brazil to clamp down on online speech, and much more.

However, what caught my eye was the discussion about the UK’s Online Safety Bill, a very problematic bill that we’ve spoken about plenty of times. And, the Economist actually got a quote from OnlyFans seeming to endorse the age verification aspects of the bill:

The most controversial part of Britain’s bill, a requirement that platforms identify content that is “legal but harmful” (eg, material that encourages eating disorders) has been dropped where adults are concerned. But there remains a duty to limit its availability to children, which in turn implies the need for widespread age checks. Tech firms say they can guess users’ ages from things like their search history and mouse movements, but that a strict duty to verify users’ age would threaten anonymity.

Some suspect that their real objection is the price. “I don’t think ‘It costs money and is hard’ is an excuse,” says Keily Blair, chief operations officer of OnlyFans, a porn-centric platform which checks the age of its users and doesn’t see why others shouldn’t do the same. Yet some platforms are adamant: the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, says it has no intention of verifying users’ age.

Look, if you want to do age verification, that’s on you, but making it mandatory is a nightmare for the open internet. First, as noted, it destroys anonymity. Second, it puts more user data at risk, for no good reason (to verify ages you have to collect sensitive data). Third, even if it is about the expense, tons of websites can’t afford that nonsense, which will serve no purpose and won’t actually keep anyone safe.

The fact that OnlyFans voluntarily decides to verify ages has a lot more to do with OnlyFans’ business model, content, and target audience. But it’s no excuse for saying that everyone else should have to deal with the same compliance nightmare despite very different products and audiences.

Apparently, this willingness to throw the open internet under the bus isn’t new. That quote seemed so out of place that I went looking, and apparently the company came out fully in favor of the Online Safety Bill last fall.

Blair hopes the Online Safety Bill, which imposes a “duty of care” on social media platforms, will bring her rivals up to the same standard the company believes it upholds.

“We want everyone to be as safe as we are. Anything that pushes people in that direction is a good thing for society,” she says. But now the bill has been pushed back, companies may be slower to act. “I’m disappointed because some people need a stick to make changes. Unfortunately, the law often is that stick.”

There’s an astounding lack of understanding about basic policy issues here, and ones that seem likely to come back to bite OnlyFans. What a “duty of care” actually means is the requirement to litigate any time anything bad happens to anyone on your site. Because each time something bad happens someone will sue, and sites will have to spend a ridiculous about of time, money, and resources to explain why they were appropriate in their “care.” Even if a site thinks it will win, it still creates a massive mess of nonsense and wasted time and money.

Later in that same article, Blair also made it clear that she has no clue how freedom of expression actually works, which is quite stunning given the content that OnlyFans regularly hosts on its own site:

What did she make of those accusations that the legislation would suppress freedom of speech? “Freedom of expression and online safety aren’t a binary choice,” she says. “The reality is that freedom of expression has always been curtailed by the law. There’s always been boundaries in place from a legal standpoint to protect around what we think is acceptable in a modern society to say and not. That’s why we have rules around hate speech.

“People often say things and do things on the internet that they would only do behind a keyboard,” she adds. “People feel emboldened to behave in certain ways sometimes. It’s right to have the same protection online as you do walking down the street.”

It’s unclear here if OnlyFans’ execs are just ignorant, foolish, believe that they can withstand the litigation onslaught while others can’t… or some combination of all three. Or maybe they see themselves as a regulatory target and think they’ll get a better deal by playing nice with regulators. But, nonetheless, it’s still disappointing that a site that has benefited so much from the open internet and freedom of expression has decided to support throwing it all away.

Filed Under: age verification, free expression, keily blair, online safety bill, online speech, open internet, uk
Companies: onlyfans