The UK communications watchdog has opened an investigation into whether OnlyFans allowed children to view pornography on its website after an age-checking error.
The regulator Ofcom is investigating the platform, which has a minimum user age of 18 and hosts mostly adult content for paying subscribers, over claims of inadequate age-verification measures. It is also investigating whether OnlyFans gave “complete and accurate” responses to information requests.
“We have grounds to suspect the platform did not implement its age-verification measures in such a way as to sufficiently protect under-18s from pornographic material,” said Ofcom.
OnlyFans acts as a marketplace for adult performers, who upload their own material and keep 80% of the revenue.
It requires subscribers to provide their name and credit card details when signing up and also uses age estimation technology from the software company Yoti, which scans a user’s face and approximates their age. If applicants fail the automatic scan they must provide formal ID to register, such as a driving licence or passport.
The website said in a statement that a coding error led to the threshold for passing the age estimation process being set at 20 years of age rather than 23, raising the possibility that younger-than-expected subscribers, including some possibly under the age of 18, were able to sign up to an OnlyFans account.
Ofcom is investigating whether 20 is a robust enough threshold to prevent under-18s from signing up. OnlyFans said it had “proactively” reported the problem to Ofcom.
The watchdog is investigating OnlyFans under its video-sharing platforms (VSP) regime and not the recently implemented online safety act (OSA). The VSP framework states that platforms within its scope, which include TikTok and Snapchat, must have measures in place to protect under-18s from videos containing pornography and other extreme material.
Ofcom can impose fines for breaches of its VSP regime and in the most serious cases it can suspend or restrict a service.
The VSP framework will ultimately be replaced by the OSA, which came into law last year. Under the act, sites that offer pornography must use robust age-checking measures or face fines that can run to £18m or 10% of a company’s global turnover.
