**tl;dr Bella Thorne’s disruption of the paid social media platform has made it incompatible for both celebrities and normal people to use the site fairly. Resultingly, celebrities should be banned from releasing content on OnlyFans.** OnlyFans is a content subscription service that was launched in 2016. The website enables content creators to earn money from users who subscribe to their feeds. In other words, it is a form of monetary social media. As a result, it is often used for the distribution of pornography. Bella Thorne joined OnlyFans in August 2020 scandalising the platform as in one single day she set a record by making $1million. Although she claims that her profits will be divided between funding her production company and charity donations, no specifics concerning the distribution of this money is known. And so, inevitably, OnlyFans will merely become a way for the rich to get richer if celebrities are not banned. Many people, including those of the sex-work community, were upset and angered by Bella Thorne’s storming arguing that she is gentrifying the platform. And so, high-profile celebrities should not be allowed to profit from the website for such a purpose because inevitably their pages will receive much more attention than others, causing much more profit. Celebrities’ profits will take away from ‘the average person’ using OnlyFans. Many sex workers rely on the platform for income, and so, endorsing celebrity content makes this much harder for them. Out of pure greed and hedonism Bella Thorne tried to charge users over $200 to unlock just one naked photo that was likely to be a scam. As a result of this celebrity power, the OnlyFans T’s&C’s have had to change capping off the maximum post price at $50, the maximum tip price at $100 and also extending content creators’ received payments from 7 days to 30 days. This has greatly reduced the chances of so many sex workers on the platform. Genuine sex workers feel disrespected by the actions of Bella Thorne which is reason enough to ban celebrities from the site. Her response to the uproar is questionable as she wrote that she “wanted to bring attention to the site, the more people on the site the more likely of a chance to normalise the stigmas” and to “remove the stigma behind sex, sex work, and the negativity that surrounds the word SEX itself by bringing a mainstream face to it.” Thorne said in joining OF she hoped she could “help bring more faces to the site to create more revenue for content creators on the site.” All in all, celebrity involvement has disrupted and harmed the platform as so should be banned. Kircher, Madison Malone (2021). ‘Bella Thorne Broke OnlyFan (No, Not Like That)’. *Vulture*. Accessible at: https://www.vulture.com/2020/08/belly-thorne-onlyfans-scam-explained.html

**TL;DR: There is certainly an issue with celebrity profiles on 'OnlyFans' taking away the business of ordinary sex workers on the platform. However, banning celebrities from the site may make the issue worse, as it will drive people away from the 'OnlyFans' site and to alternative NSFW sites that celebrities can post on.** Banning celebrity profiles from 'OnlyFans' will only encourage celebrities to create content on new websites which are similar to 'OnlyFans'. As demonstrated by Bella Thorne, people are more interested in seeing explicit celebrity content than that from an average sex worker, and by banning celebrities from the 'OnlyFans' site a lot of business may be lost for the ordinary content creator on the platform. It is clear that celebrity presence on the site drives more people to interact with 'OnlyFans', and this increased engagement on the site might lead to more business and income as people discover and interact with the non-celebrity profiles on the site coincidently. If the sexual material provided by celebrities such as Thorne moves over to another website, people interacting with their NSFW content will follow. This will likely drive more people away from seeing the content provided by normal people/sex workers on 'OnlyFans'. Despite this, it is clear that whether celebrities are banned from 'OnlyFans' or not they will still be stealing business and income away from the everyday sex worker, as they will be able to continue to post their content on other alternative NSFW sites.

**TL;DR: Banning celebrities from the OnlyFans platform may represent an ethical action beneficial to sex workers. However, the action runs counter to corporate responsibility and the current rule of the market. Therefore, while OnlyFans SHOULD take that action, it CANNOT and WILL NOT.** OnlyFans’s corporate does not bear any responsibility to its users. OnlyFans is a for-profit business entity, and thus profit represents its primary goal. Having celebrities on its platform will no doubt leads to profit maximization. What, then, of the many sex workers on the OnlyFans? They fall out of the company’s legal responsibility. The U.S. corporate law structure mandates companies to consider only the benefits of their stakeholders and nobody else. While new concepts have started to challenge that legal premise, they have yet to have a significant impact. [1] Therefore, when the celebrity presence results in a conflict of interests between users and stakeholders, OnlyFans is legally obligated to think of only the latter. The celebrity phenomenon exists unchecked beyond OnlyFans. Technology has long served as a stimulus for a widening economic gap. The phenomenon, called the superstar effect, happens when a capable person uses technology to maximize their clients and work efficiency. As the principle of the market goes, more work means more rewards. [2] Celebrities on OnlyFans represent merely the most recent example of such a phenomenon. Therefore, it seems unrealistic, and almost unfair, to ask OnlyFans to curb a wide-spread economic trend. OnlyFans is a profit-driven company. It is not exempted from the wider framework of corporate law and economic principles. For this reason, one cannot expect it to stand as an exception to take the counterproductive step of censoring celebrities. [1]. Strine, Leo E., Lawrence A. Hamermesh, and Matthew Jennejohn. 2013. "Putting Stockholders First, Not The First-Filed Complaint". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2200499. [2]. Kaplan, Steven N, and Joshua Rauh. 2013. "It's The Market: The Broad-Based Rise In The Return To Top Talent". Journal Of Economic Perspectives 27 (3): 35-56. doi:10.1257/jep.27.3.35.