OnlyFans has been accused of blacklisting the social media accounts of performers who promote its rivals by having them placed on the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) database, it was reported on Tuesday.
FanCentro, an alternative adult website, launched the legal action against the owner of OnlyFans, Leonid Radvinsky, and the company which facilitates its payments, Fenix Internet LLC, back in November.
In documents filed in a Florida court, FanCentro alleges adult performers who promoted rival websites to OnlyFans were placed on the GIFCT’s international database, which uses technology to stop the spread of terrorist images by recording a unique digital signature for them, called ‘hashes.’
The database is shared across the forum’s 18 members, including Facebook and Twitter. If one company hashes content, it is then flagged too all the other members, allowing them to moderate similar content.
Claiming the database has been “manipulated,” FanCentro states that adult performers had social media content removed and accounts disabled, even though they did not contain terrorism content that would elicit such a response.
FanCentro is seeking financial damages over the use of the database, arguing it led to a decline in traffic to rivals of OnlyFans.
OnlyFans has not yet filed a legal response to FanCentro’s allegations but a spokesperson for the company claimed the accusations have “no merit.”
The UK’s national broadcaster, the BBC, stated on Tuesday that, while not named in the legal filing, Facebook has been issued with a subpoena in the case, compelling it to turn over records.
The subpoena reportedly seeks copies of internal documents from the social media company showing that rivals to OnlyFans were added to its list of so-called Dangerous Individuals or Organizations, as well as any payments from OnlyFans to Facebook’s parent company Meta.
Meta released a statement claiming that “these allegations are without merit and we will address them in the context of the litigation as needed.”
"We are not aware of any evidence to support the theories presented in this lawsuit between two parties with no connection to GIFCT,” a representative for GIFCT said in response to the lawsuit’s claims, adding it is working “to enhance transparency and oversight” of its “hash-sharing database.”