OnlyFans is being accused of paying Meta to place thousands of adult stars on a terrorist watchlist.
According to a report by the New York Post, multiple lawsuits claim the X-rated entertainment platform allegedly bribed several Meta employees in 2018 to add the names and social media accounts of over 20,000 sex workers to a watchlist run by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), which was initially co-founded by Meta, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube to “stop the spread of mass shooting videos and other terrorist content across social media sites." And per a class-action suit filed by adult stars Alana Evans, Kelly Pierce and Ruby, performers on the list were "shadowbanned" and prevented from promoting any content on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, leading to lost income.
Meanwhile, two separate suits filed by fellow subscription-based sites, FanCentro and JustFor.Fans, allege that OnlyFans' motivation was to funnel traffic away from rival platforms, which were subsequently subject to far stricter filtering guidelines. They also claim the bribes were paid for by OnlyFans parent company Fenix International “through a secret Hong Kong subsidiary into offshore Philippines bank accounts set up by the crooked Meta employees.”
“The blacklisting of plaintiffs and others has caused OnlyFans to achieve a drastically enlarged market share while its competitors stagnated or declined,” attorneys for JustFor.Fans wrote. “The defendants engaged in a scheme to misuse a terrorist blacklist to obtain a competitive advantage.”
However, both Meta and OnlyFans have refuted the claims, with the former telling the BBC that “these allegations are without merit and we will address them in the context of the litigation as needed." As for OnlyFans, a spokesperson acknowledged the existence of these cases in a statement to the New York Post, though the company is "not aware of any evidence which supports these allegations."
The rep added, "The alleged participants have all publicly stated that these cases have no merit.”
Photo via Getty / Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto