UK regulator to probe OnlyFans over age-verification measures | World News
Britain’s media regulator Ofcom has opened an investigation into whether or not adults-only web site OnlyFans is doing sufficient to stop youngsters accessing pornography on its platform, Ofcom mentioned on Wednesday.
“Having reviewed submissions we obtained from OnlyFans in response to formal data requests, now we have grounds to suspect the platform didn’t implement its age-verification measures in such a approach as to sufficiently defend under-18s from pornographic materials,” the watchdog mentioned.
Ofcom mentioned it was additionally investigating whether or not OnlyFans didn’t adjust to its duties to supply full and correct data in response to statutory requests.
She mentioned the UK-based firm makes use of age-assurance supplier Yoti however a coding configuration problem led to a reporting error, which acknowledged a threshold was set to 23 years-of-age, throughout a time frame when it had been set to twenty.
“OnlyFans found the reporting error and proactively amended our report back to Ofcom,” the spokesperson added.
The difficulty associated to UK-based “followers” solely.
A Reuters investigation revealed in March additionally targeted on the web site’s moderation course of, on this occasion for adults. In additional than 120 circumstances in the US and 18 in Britain, men and women complained that sexually express content material had been posted with out their consent.
In response, an OnlyFans spokesperson had mentioned that “within the few examples the place dangerous actors have misused our platform”, OnlyFans “eliminated the content material swiftly, banned the person and actively supported investigations and prosecutions”.
Ofcom gained new powers when Britain’s On-line Security Act got here into legislation final 12 months, requiring social media corporations to cease youngsters accessing pornography and dangerous content material.
Below the legislation, Ofcom can effective corporations that do not comply as much as 18 million kilos ($22 million) or 10% of their world income, whichever is bigger.
