TECH: GEANTS COLLISION
Facebook and OnlyFans accused of shutting out rivals.

Face­book has been accused of col­lud­ing with Only­Fans to black­list rival adult web­sites in a law­suit filed in the Unit­ed States.

This week, BBC News revealed that Only­Fans was being sued for order­ing a social media com­pa­ny to dis­able the accounts of adult artists by plac­ing their con­tent in a ter­ror­ism database.

Face­book has now been named as the com­pa­ny that alleged­ly con­spired with Only­Fans in a class action law­suit. Its par­ent com­pa­ny, Meta, says the alle­ga­tions are “base­less.”

The British web­site Only­Fans — best known for host­ing pornog­ra­phy — has grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly in recent years. It allows users to share video clips and pho­tos with sub­scribers for a month­ly fee.

Per­form­ers often use social media accounts to pro­mote and link to adult web­sites post­ing their explic­it content.

On Tues­day, BBC News revealed that rival adult web­site Fan­Cen­tro is suing Only­Fans in the Unit­ed States.

The law­suit claims that social media con­tent from adult per­form­ers pro­mot­ing rival web­sites to Only­Fans was placed on a data­base of extrem­ist mate­r­i­al shared among tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies that is man­aged by the Glob­al Inter­net Forum on Coun­tert­er­ror­ism (GIFCT).

The data­base — used by Face­book, YouTube and Twit­ter — flags ter­ror­ist con­tent to oth­er mem­bers so they can mod­er­ate sim­i­lar con­tent on their platforms.

Only­Fans has not yet issued a legal response, but a spokesper­son said the com­pa­ny was aware of the alle­ga­tions and that they had “no basis” for them.

Now, a class action law­suit has been launched that names Face­book as the com­pa­ny accused of col­lud­ing with OnlyFans.

The suit, filed on behalf of three adult artists, lists both Face­book and Only­Fans’ par­ent com­pa­ny as defen­dants. It was brought by the same U.S. law firm, Mil­berg, that is suing Only­Fans directly.

The case asserts that per­form­ers’ con­tent was placed in the GIFCT data­base despite not being ter­ror­ist in nature, result­ing in reduced vis­i­bil­i­ty on social net­works and a marked decrease in traf­fic to Only­Fans’ com­pet­ing websites.

Artists who only pro­mot­ed their Only­Fans accounts on social net­works did not face this puni­tive con­tent mod­er­a­tion — it is alleged — result­ing in a sharp increase in traf­fic vis­it­ing the website.

In recent years, artists using Insta­gram to pro­mote and link to their adult web­sites have com­plained that even if they did not vio­late the site’s com­mu­ni­ty guide­lines, they received vio­la­tion noti­fi­ca­tions and delet­ed posts.

The result­ing loss of vis­i­bil­i­ty and pro­mo­tion of these accounts became known as “shad­ow­ban”.