Didn't see that coming

Well, this news seems to have caught everyone by surprise:

OnlyFans, the subscriber-only website synonymous with pornography, has announced it will ban adult material from the site after pressure from its payment processors.

The company will continue to allow some posts containing nudity but “any content containing sexually-explicit conduct” will be banned, with the site instead focusing on more mainstream content.

Not that I have ever used it, but it is pretty remarkable, I think, to watch the way that people have realised there is more than one way to skin a cat (a phrase which, incidentally, feels deserving of replacement in this animal friendly era) when it comes to online porn reduction:

Payment processing companies increasingly control what material pornography sites are able to host. Last December, Visa and Mastercard briefly banned payments to websites owned by online pornography giant MindGeek, following reports it was hosting “revenge porn” uploaded without the consent of those involved. The financial businesses only backtracked when MindGeek deleted tens of millions of unverified videos from its sites such as PornHub.

OnlyFans has enabled tens of thousands of sex workers to earn substantial incomes in return for handing over 20% of their earnings to the company, with many creators saying it has given them financial freedom. Internal figures obtained by Axios suggest about 16,000 creators earn at least $50,000 (£36,000) annually from the site.

However, it has also faced growing political and regulatory scrutiny over its ability to remove illegal and exploitative material. Earlier this month more than a hundred US congressmen and women demanded a department of justice investigation into OnlyFans, relating to the alleged presence of underage material on the site.