LOS ANGELES—Dominic Ford, the founder of JustFor.fans (JFF), wants content creators impacted by Gumroad's new terms and conditions on NSFW content to transfer their business to his platform.
“Creators affected by Gumroad’s prohibitive new adult content policies need only come over to JFF and set up shop with us in our ‘Artwork’ section of the store,” Ford said.
“We can easily set up any other features you need to assist with your merchandising, and our support department is available to accommodate sellers in quickly getting back to business," he added.
On March 18, Gumroad's terms of service policies were updated to assuage pressure brought on by payment companies like Stripe and PayPal. These companies are notorious for their strict policies on adult content and material they view as potentially NSFW.
"In accordance with the policies of our payment processing partners, including Stripe and PayPal, we do not allow sales of [...] sexually explicit content," reads Gumroad's policy. "To be clear, this includes all types of media: photography, videos, animations, illustrations, written media, audiobooks, and audio products."
This essentially bans the vast majority of adult-oriented content.
Gumroad specifies that certain content must be marked with NSFW labels. The example the policy gives is cosplay. Specifically, it says that content that focuses more on the cosplay elements rather than a sexual or prurient twist on a cosplay subject may remain.
“We have been asked to be more rigorous in enforcing our [terms of service] and must comply,” Sahil Lavingia, founder of Gumroad, told TechCrunch reporter Amanda Silberling in a statement. “Obviously, it sucks to do this. We don’t take it lightly that many creators rely on Gumroad for their livelihoods and have communicated that to our partners wherever and whenever we could."
This move hearkens back to decisions made by other platform popular platforms among adult content creators related to their payment partners. OnlyFans tried to ban adult content in 2021 but quickly walked back the announcement after backlash. At the time, the parent company of OnlyFans was in a situation similar to Gumroad but managed to locate new financial partners.
In general, companies across the financial sector hold significant power over most web platforms.
Another example is when major credit card companies Visa and Mastercard blocked card payments to Pornhub and its network of premium websites due to allegations of exploitation of minors lodged by anti-porn activists and journalist Nicholas Kristof in 2020.
Then, the OnlyFans scandal gave way to the rise of alternative platforms that strictly cater to adult content and users of legal age.
JustFor.fans is one such platform that pushed to fill the power vacuum.
“Because of a lack of safe adult websites, NSFW creators often turn to mainstream sites to conduct their business," Ford noted, referring to the rise of adult-oriented content sold or formerly sold on online marketplace platforms like Gumroad and Etsy.
"As we have seen time and time again, however, these companies will cut NSFW creators off at a moment’s notice," he added. "We are stepping up to make sure the NSFW artists who have just been de-platformed have a safe, adult-friendly home."
JFF has made platform updates. These include users uploading zip or PDF file types of up to 2 gigabyte file sizes.
JFF's Media Center now features a new 'Files' category to manage uploads and create store items or posts. The new 'Art' categories enhance product visibility and searchability, acknowledging ongoing updates to better reflect diverse creations.
Other features are enabled to provide improved functionality for artists.
"We need to protect this community as much as possible,” concluded Ford. He founded JFF in 2018 as an online community for adult content to serve the self-publishing needs of models—straight, gay, trans and non-binary.
