Yet another service kicked sex workers off its platform. Based on MotherboardLinktree, a tool that allows you to share multiple links with a single URL online, has allowed sex workers to launch overnight and without warning. Banned users took to social networks like Twitter to announce that their accounts were banned “for inappropriate use” and didn’t even receive an email or any kind of notification about it. . According to the report, some people were billed for the service, which costs $9 per month for the Pro tier, but were not refunded once their accounts were cancelled.
Marlene Bonnelly, Head of Trust & Safety at Linktree, told the publication that the banned accounts shared a URL that violated its Community Standards. Bonnelly’s statement reads:
“According to our company policy, banned Linktree accounts stem from sharing a URL that violates Community Standards by sharing ads to sell real-life sexual services.”
Sex workers use tools like Linktree, as some platforms don’t allow direct links to adult sites like OnlyFans. Perhaps more importantly, they have to diversify their use of several websites, because they never know when a service suddenly decides to ban adult content.
Financial services such as PayPal, Visa and MasterCard, have long been known close accounts of sex dealers. Patreon forbidden content of a sexual nature returned in 2017 and the number of services that decided not to accept sex workers and their content has only increased since the US government pass FOSTA-SESTA a few years ago. Even OnlyFans, which has become synonymous with adult content, try to ban “pornography” in 2021 until it ban its planned policy change.
Linktree’s Terms of Service state that users may not “post any sexually explicit material (including images and language) on your Site or your account itself.” However, it’s vague and not entirely clear if linking to sites like OnlyFans always goes against its rules. It’s also not clear why Linktree has suddenly started banning sex workers when they’ve been using the service without issue for quite some time, but sex dealers might want to find a sharing tool. other links they can use.
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