Twitter Tried to Develop Clone of OnlyFans

With the amount of success OnlyFans has achieved in recent years, it’s no surprise that other social media platforms have tried to emulate the service, and Twitter is no exception. According to a new investigation from The Verge, the company tried to create a clone of the website now famous for its adult content, but internal staff ultimately decided against it due to concerns rising over moderating material relating to sexual abuse.

Dubbed the “Adult Content Monetization project,” plans for an OnlyFans clone first started back in the spring of this year, allocating 84 employees to form a “Red Team” in order to work out how to make it happen. By April, the team had concluded that “Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale.” The investigation from the tech outlet also points towards research back in February of 2021 that concluded the social media platform was not doing enough to prevent the posting and removal of such content on its service, noting internal findings that the program used by Twitter to detect abusive material was at the time “by far one of the most fragile, inefficient and under-supported tools” it had running.

In response to the report, Twitter issued a statement addressing its stance on sexual content and the work it has put into fighting abuse. “Twitter has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation. We aggressively fight online child sexual abuse and have invested in technology and tools to enforce our policy,” the company wrote. “Recent reports about Twitter on the topic are dated and provide a moment in time glance at just one aspect of our work in this space and our work here continues. Since that time we have sharpened our focus and expanded the resources dedicated to child safety.”

Elsewhere in the tech industry, Elon Musk is once again trying to delay his lawsuit against Twitter.