OnlyFans is accused of sabotaging users who have accounts on rival sites

The OnlyFans website has been accused of conspiring to decrease the reach of social media profiles of adult artists working for rival sites.

The BBC has exclusive access to documents from a US court case that indicate that OnlyFans directed an unnamed social media company to sabotage artists’ accounts by placing their content in a terrorism database.

OnlyFans representatives reportedly paid bribes to employees of that company to facilitate the practice. OnlyFans says it is aware of the lawsuit, which it described as “meritless”.

Based in London, UK, OnlyFans — best known for hosting porn — has grown a lot in recent years. The platform allows users to share video clips and photos with subscribers of their channels in exchange for money.

Artists often use social media accounts — including Twitter and Instagram — to promote and link to adult sites with more explicit content.

The process

BBC News has learned that rival adult site FanCentro has filed a US lawsuit against OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky and the company that takes payments for the platform, Fenix​​Internet LLC.

The suit was submitted to a court in Florida last November but had not been made public until now.

In it, FanCentro alleges that in 2018 OnlyFans directed an unnamed social media company to blacklist competing adult sites.

FanCentro claims that social media content from adult artists promoting rival sites to OnlyFans has been placed in an international counter-terrorism database — the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.

This database uses advanced technology to prevent the dissemination of images of terrorists by recording a unique digital signature known as “hashes”.

The hash database is shared among all 18 forum members — including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat. If a company hashed a video or photograph, it will be flagged to other members so they can moderate similar content on their platform.

According to the lawsuit, FanCentro believes the database was “rigged”, which resulted in many adult artists having their social posts removed and accounts deactivated – despite not containing any terrorist content.

This happened most notably on Instagram, the lawsuit says.

FanCentro claims that the reduced visibility of these artists on social media has led to a sharp decline in traffic directed to rival OnlyFans sites. FanCentro is seeking financial reparations.

However, artists who only promoted their OnlyFans accounts on social media did not face this punitive content moderation, leading to massive growth in traffic from website visits, the lawsuit adds.

The suit also alleges that one or more of the company’s unidentified social media company employees — including a senior staff member — may have been bribed to facilitate the scheme by OnlyFans representatives.

OnlyFans has yet to rule on the case in court, but a spokesperson said the company was aware of the allegations — describing them as “without merit”.

Facebook is not named in the legal action, but BBC News has been told that the company has received a subpoena — meaning it may be required to provide records. Facebook and Instagram have the same parent company, now called Meta.

The subpoena requests copies of any internal documents showing rival sites to OnlyFans included in Meta’s lists of so-called Dangerous Individuals or Organizations and any payments received from representatives of OnlyFans.

Under US law, companies can be subpoenaed if they hold any material information about the subject of a complaint, not just if they have evidence that could reveal whether someone has committed wrongdoing.

One of FanCentro’s lawyers, David Azar of the law firm Milberg, says the firm is planning to subpoena other companies for evidence, including social media companies.

In a statement, Meta said, “These allegations are without merit and we will address them in the context of litigation as necessary.”

The company added that it investigated and found no evidence that the hash database shared file has been unduly altered.

In recent years, artists who use Instagram to promote and link to their adult sites have complained that while they didn’t violate the site’s community guidelines, they received violation notifications and the posts were removed. The subsequent loss of visibility and promotion of these accounts became known as “shadowban”.

For artists, it remains a mystery to what extent any action taken against the accounts was a result of a specific policy or targeted moderation of their content.

“We were seeing mass deletions with no clear reason as to what was happening or why,” says Alana Evans, president of a group representing adult content artists — the Adult Performers Actors Guild.

She says she has seen artists fall into serious financial difficulties, with some even homeless.

In 2019, some artists met with representatives of Instagram after claiming that their accounts were deactivated. The company acknowledged that some profiles were incorrectly removed, but denied that this was done deliberately.

“We don’t have policies that target adult content artists,” a spokesperson said at the time.

Camila (not her real name) used to have millions of followers on her Instagram account — which was verified (with the blue badge). She says the removal of much of her content and the eventual closure of her account had a “devastating” impact on her.

In the posts, Camila regularly appeared in a bikini or panties. Typically, the photos contained links to an adult site — a rival to OnlyFans — that hosted videos that users had to pay to watch.

In October 2018, she started receiving notifications of content infringement removed by Instagram. Soon, posts began to be taken down regularly. Some of the photos removed were mundane images — including photos when she was on vacation and fully dressed.

“They started getting deleted multiple times a day and then multiple posts at once,” she says.

BBC News has discovered that the status of Camila’s Instagram account – only visible to the engineering team – has been changed to “critical”. This meant the profile was no longer promoted prominently, leading to reduced visibility.

“My page was slowly dying and losing followers because posts were being deleted. That means no one saw me,” he says.

Camila says she has continually appealed against the removal of her photos, but has only received an automated response. At one point, even her ability to appeal on Instagram was removed, she says. Her account was subsequently closed completely.

Camila says she used to earn at least $50,000 a month performing on the adult site, but now earns a fraction of that amount as her Instagram account no longer drives traffic to the platform.

The owner of a different adult website than the one that sued OnlyFans said his company was also affected, but he doesn’t know how or why. He says that in late 2018 it looked like a “bomb” had been placed on his business.

More than 100 Instagram accounts that used to drive traffic to adult artists appearing on their site have suffered a major loss of visibility and some have been shut down entirely, he says. He says his income has dropped significantly.

Meta said it cannot comment on these claims without the usernames or names of the adult sites being promoted on its platforms.

A spokesperson added that the company’s guidelines set a high standard in recommending accounts that users are not already following.

The content with hash in the database managed by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism is not independently audited.

“We are not aware of any evidence to support the theories presented in this process between two parties unconnected with GIFCT,” said a spokesperson for the institution.

“Our ongoing work to increase transparency and oversight of the data-sharing database GIFCT hash is the result of extensive engagement with our stakeholders and has no connection to these claims.”