Bella Thorne, former Disney child star, entered the porn industry last summer by directing her first Pornhub film, and naturally, the mainstream media lost its mind. Since then, however, the news of yet another mainstream pseudo-celebrity dabbling in porn has gone a bit stale. So, in August, Thorne re-upped her publicity with a new stunt: She started an OnlyFans account.
Thorne told PAPER: “OnlyFans is the first platform where I can fully control my image; without censorship, without judgement, and without being bullied online for being me.” She announced at the same time that she planned to charge her followers $20 per month on the adult-friendly platform, and a press release at the time estimated that she would be earning around “$1 a month,” according to PAPER. Cool, cool.
But that estimate, it turned out, was a bit low. In a record-breaking debut, Thorne became the first OnlyFans content creator to earn $1 million in a single day, reported the Los Angeles Times. In less than a week on the platform, she had earned $2 million. She told media outlets that she was using her experience to make money, of course, but also to research a prospective feature film about using the platform, alongside Sean Baker.
Initially, her success was a source of excitement for the estimated 700,000 other content creators on OnlyFans. If she could do it, maybe they could, too! But that excitement quickly soured when the fallout from Thorne’s massive payday began to show itself.
First of all, a big part of Thorne’s success came, it seems, from her promising a fully nude pay-per-view photo of herself for a whopping $200. A screenshot of her OnlyFans account shows Thorne allegedly telling users the promised photo would be “Naked. NAKED!? yes naked.” But, users say, the photo they saw showed her in lingerie, reported the NY Post. In fact, the Los Angeles Times said, “So far, her page does feature some suggestive imagery—numerous bikini photos, her eating a hot dog—but nothing explicitly graphic.”
https://twitter.com/thekiranoir/status/1299197442550759425
The bait-and-switch maneuver had repercussions reaching further than Thorne may have realized, however. Twitter user Rowan Void laid out how Thorne’s bait-and-switch tactics may have harmed OnlyFans in a big way: “OF doesn’t do refunds, which means chargebacks. Many many chargebacks. You know who hates chargebacks? VISA and banks. You know why sites have their content rules? That’s VISA and banks.” When users got angry that they’d been scammed out the nudity they paid for and demanded their money bank, banks could have gotten angry about those chargebacks. And those banks have the ability to make it much more difficult for OnlyFans to do business.
A little extra issue with the #onlyfans #bellathorn debacle. This fucked with VISA and banks. OF doesn't do refunds, which means chargebacks. Many many chargebacks. You know who hates chargebacks? VISA and banks. You know why sites have their content rules? That's VISA and banks.
— Rowan Void (@rowanvoid) August 30, 2020
At least, that’s how it looked like things went. Because, shortly after Thorne’s account debuted, rumors began swirling online that OnlyFans was imposing a host of new payment restrictions on its creators. OnlyFans confirmed the payment changes to The Vulture on September 1: “The new rules include a $100 cap on paid private messages, compared to $200 before, and a $50 cap on pay-per-view posts for creators who don’t charge a subscription, compared to $200 previously.” That $200 limit, by the way, is largely what earned Bella Thorne her $2 million. Vulture continued, “OnlyFans is also lengthening the pending payout period from seven to 21 days for creators in 14 countries, including India, Belize, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Venezuela,” Vulture reported.
Other OnlyFans content creators, upset at the changes, blamed Thorne’s explosive debut.
Fabiana Fox tweeted to their 35K followers, “Bella lied to subscribers selling a $200 lingerie photo saying it was a nude.” They continued, after laying out the changes to payments, “This impacts everyone.”
“The issue with Bella Thorne benefiting from OF is that she’s not a sex worker and doesn’t need to turn to this site to afford to live when so many of us rely on this money,” wrote Twitter user @alxmartenez. “and she’s totally f**king us for clout for her s**tty new movie about sex work when she has no f**king idea.”
https://twitter.com/FabianaFox_/status/1299109713762689024
Charlie Rose, for instance, tweeted a photo of herself to her 117K fans in which she’s covering her nipples with middle fingers that says, simply, “F**k You Bella Thorne.”
OnlyFans has maintained that Thorne had nothing to do with the changes. “We can confirm that any changes to transaction limits are not based on any one user,” the company told The Verge and multiple other media outlets.
Still, on August 29, Thorne apologized to everyone on Twitter, saying that she joined OnlyFans to “Remove the stigma behind sex, sex work, and the negativity taht surrounds the word SEX itself by bringing a mainstream face to it.” She claimed that she was trying to “help bring more faces to the site to create more revenue for content creators.” Mixed in among claims that she has risked her career for this noble stigma-reduction cause, she said, “In this process I hurt you and for that I’m truly sorry.”
Still, she hasn’t made any announcements about what she’s going to do with her $2 million in profits. Seems a lot of content creators who do sex work for a living could use while they wait for their payouts and watch their bank accounts take a nosedive.
Bella Thorne image by Mingle Media TV, via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. It has been cropped and padded with black background.
