Sex workers who use TikTok say they’re increasingly seeing their accounts deleted, Rolling Stone reported on Friday. Content creators are aware of the app’s reputation for enforcing confusing yet strict community guidelines. But sex workers who use both TikTok and OnlyFans and spoke to Rolling Stone say they didn’t violate any guidelines before their accounts were deleted.
It’s not uncommon on the app to find young men and women dancing in little or no clothing. But TikTok is apparently cracking down on anyone who links to their sex work sites, even if their content on the TikTok app is safe for work, Rolling Stone reports.
One of the sex workers Rolling Stone’s EJ Dickson spoke to, Ally Hardesty, posts explicit content on the subscription based-platform OnlyFans. The site allows sex workers to sell explicit photos and videos in exchange for a monthly subscription to their page.
Hardesty posted a video of herself dancing to a song called “Twerk for Me” and said that the next day, her whole account was deleted with a vague explanation from TikTok. “They basically just said I couldn’t get my account back because I’d violated the terms,” Ally told Rolling Stone.
All of her videos that helped her amassed a following of 40,000 people were deleted. Her story is not uncommon for female sex workers looking to expand their audience to different platforms.
People usually find a way to post content on TikTok that may or may not go against their community guidelines. Many will misspell words or in Lydia Love’s case, not even include a link to her OnlyFans account. But she did link to a third-party page that had a link to her OnlyFans, and that resulted in her account getting deleted, Rolling Stone reports.
“TONS of girls I know got deleted. It was like a huge sweep with no explanation,” Love told the publication.
A spokesperson from TikTok refused to offer Rolling Stone a reason as to why these accounts were being deleted en masse.
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H/T Gizmodo