Earlier this week, eagle-eyed reverse engineer Jane Wong, shared details about an upcoming Twitter update which may be rolling out to users soon – Super Follows.
What are Super Follows?
They’re essentially a paid subscription feature that will allow users to pay creators they love for exclusive content and bragging rights of being a ‘Super Follower’. The interesting part, however, lies in the fact that (as pointed out in Wong’s tweet) Twitter has identified ‘adult content’ and ‘OnlyFans’ as content categories and platforms.
OnlyFans, for those who aren’t aware, is a subscription-based platform where subscribers can pay monthly fees and one-time tips for access to exclusive content which sits solely on the platform. But, while its original intentions were for creators of all disciplines to share content (personal trainers, tutors, fitness models, the lot), the platform has become synonymous with adult content. It’s also become synonymous with making serious amounts of money. Love Island’s Megan Barton-Hanson, for example, reportedly makes an astonishing £800,000 a month from selling exclusive photos and videos to her fans.
So clearly, OnlyFans is great in theory, yes, but it’s often not so great in practice. It’s indisputable that OnlyFans has given sex workers increased autonomy and freedom, both financially and creatively, liberated from the manipulative and exploitative ties of the porn industry, but that doesn’t mean that the platform comes without faults.
At surface level, building an audience on OnlyFans can be a laborious task if you’re starting from scratch, and relies on creators cross-promoting on their own social platforms, which means building an audience there, too. So, while your Bella Thornes and Bhad Babies are able to tap into their millions of existing followers and turn them into millions of pounds overnight, for an average creator it’s a little trickier to gain exposure.
Below the surface, once you’re on the platform, creators are met with a whole host of hurdles. As it stands, there is little protection from content leaks on the platform and accounts which are solely dedicated to sharing leaked OnlyFans content exist freely online without much consequence. Subscription structures are also weak and lacking in regulation, and are at the mercy of external factors beyond the creator’s control (i.e. Bella Thorne-gate where OnlyFans lowered transaction limits and increased payout time frames for all its creators as a result of Bella pulling in $1million in one day.)
So, Twitter’s own subscription feature could well address a lot of problems that OnlyFans poses. The platform itself is one of the few social media networks that allows sexual content and nudity and has made a name for itself as a place where adult creators can (for the most part) share their work safely without fear of suspension or removals, unlike Instagram where you would be met with an account suspension faster than you can say, ‘click the link in my bio’.
Super Follows could also arguably play a large part in legitimising adult content creators and sex work online. As it stands, a lot of people see OnlyFans as a very segregated area of the internet, a secret club often met with judgement. Would a move from OnlyFans to Twitter help bring sex work into the mainstream lens? Would people be less likely to judge, berate and abuse sex workers if they were given a space on one of the biggest platforms online? Perhaps.
But, as we know, with great power comes great responsibility, and the big question is: will Twitter *actually* be able to protect and support sex workers if they choose to adopt the feature? Will they be able to scale this model with sufficient policies, safety tools and moderation to prevent abuse? Will they be able to fairly support the monetisation of creators’ content?
When contacted by GLAMOUR, Twitter declined to comment at this moment.
For more from GLAMOUR’s Social Media Assistant, Luca Wetherby-Matthews follow her on Instagram @lucawetherbym.