The wildly popular social media video platform TikTok, has a reported 800 million users worldwide, has been quietly purging sex workers from its site — even though the sex workers say they have not posted anything in violation of TikTok’s content rules, according to an investigation by Rolling Stone magazine.
One sex worker, Rebekka Blue, told the magazine that she had dubbed the ban “the TikTok purge,” a mass ban of sex workers supposedly for violating TikTok policies against nudity and sexual content. But all of sex workers who spoke to Rolling Stone said that they had not posted any nude or sexual content on TikTok.
What they did have in common, however, was that they all linked to their OnlyFans accounts in their bios, or through links to a third-party app.
A TikTok spokesperson told Rolling Stone that the app does not permit “accounts that attempt to redirect traffic.” But accounts linking to more mainstream social media sites such as Twitter and YouTube have not been booted from the platform.
Celebrities on TikTok who are also OnlyFans creators, such as Hollywood actress Bella Thorne, have been allowed to keep their accounts, according to Rolling Stone.
Just in the past week, TikTok has posted new “community guidelines” which are set to take effect on December 29. The new guidelines expand the ban on nudity and sexually explicit content to include “content that depicts, promotes, or glorifies sexual solicitation, including offering or asking for sexual partners, sexual chats or imagery, sexual services, premium sexual content, or sexcamming.”
But the sex workers who say they have been kicked off TikTok all suffered their bannings prior to the new guidelines being announced.
Photo By Solen Feyissa / Wikimedia Commons
