OnlyFans’ competitors smell blood—and are going after its adult creators and the piles of money they generate—as the firm waffles on porn. The naked truth behind which platforms stand to gain the most.

Evan Seinfeld, the Brooklyn-born second cousin of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, has been getting his online adult   content platform IsMyGirl ready for a great migration. He is expecting an influx of thousands of porn stars and   sex workers who are leaving OnlyFans, the category leading London-based platform that banned sexually     explicit content only to revqerse its ban a week later.

“We’re at DEFCON 1,” says Seinfeld, who was the vocalist and bass player of thrash metal band Biohazard before getting into the adult entertainment industry. He says that 1,000 creators signed up for IsMyGirl on the first day OnlyFans announced it would block porn starting in October. The next day, Seinfeld says, 1,400 people signed up for his site. Now thousands of people per day are applying, adding, “It’s too many people coming in.”

OnlyFans, which has been under scrutiny for reportedly having underage performers on its site, blamed the banks for the porn ban, saying they were refusing to process the platform’s transactions. Then six days later OnlyFans did an abrupt volte-face: “We have secured assurances necessary to support our diverse creator community,” the company announced in a new statement, “and have suspended the planned October 1 policy change.”

The flip-flopping—and uncertainty surrounding the future (does “suspended” mean “postponed” or “permanently canceled”?)—has hurt OnlyFans’ reputation in the eyes of both creators and users, and whether or not they ban porn in the future, the damage is done. After years of vying for other bodily fluids, OnlyFans’ competition now smells blood in the water.

The financial opportunity—and the battle for a portion of OnlyFans’ 1.6 million creators and 150 million users—is huge. The company reported that users spent $2.3 billion in 2020 on the platform, of which OnlyFans keeps 20%. An estimated 85% of those payments were for sexually explicit content, according to industry insiders, or about $390 million a year. Now platforms like ManyVids, IsMyGirl, LoyalFans, Fansly, FanCentro, AVN Stars and more are duking it out and trying to grab as much of that cash, and attract as many creators, as possible.

 

Moody says she will be focusing her efforts on the new platform Peach because she now feels that OnlyFans doesn’t respect sex workers. “The de-banking and de-platforming of sex workers is occupational discrimination,” says Moody adding, “Banks are for business, not for religious crusades. JPMorgan Chase and BNY Mellon and MasterCard need to get out of people’s bedrooms and work on policies with sex workers that reduce harm.”