OnlyFans bans 'sexually explicit conduct,' but nudity is still okay

OnlyFans will ban users from uploading photos and videos “sexually explicit conduct” as of October 1st. Although the company will block depictions of sex acts, nudity is still allowed as long as creators stick by OnlyFans’ Acceptable Use Policy. The changes follow pressure from payment providers and banking providers, as Bloomberg first reported.

“In order to ensure the long-term sustainability of our platform, and the continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans, we must evolve our content guidelines,” OnlyFans told Engadget in a statement. 

The company will share more details about the move in the coming days and it promised to “actively support and guide our creators through this change in content guidelines.” Enforcing the new policy will likely be difficult, though all uploads to OnlyFans are checked by human moderators, according to the company. 

OnlyFans allows its more than 2 million creators to share exclusive content with their paid subscribers. Many of the top creators on the platform, which has 130 million users, sell nude or sexually explicit photos and videos. Many sex workers have relied on revenue from the site over the last few years, especially as the pandemic took hold and it was more difficult for them to earn a living elsewhere.

Patreon similarly allows creators to share explicit nude images with their paid subscribers. However, it doesn’t allow “pornographic material or sexual services.”

Earlier this year, OnlyFans quietly released a mobile and TV app that features fitness, cooking, comedy, music and other types of content from its creators, but zero nudity. This week, the company started a promotional push for OFTV, underscoring its move to a more sanitized future.

Waymo's autonomous vehicles have clocked 20 million miles on public roads

Although other companies that are working on autonomous driving might get more attention, Waymo is still hard at work on the technology. The Alphabet subsidiary just provided an update on its Waymo Driver AI as well as more details about its self-driving tests.

An array of LiDAR, radar and cameras can track what’s going on all around the vehicle in a variety of weather conditions, Waymo says. The system generates a 3D view of the vehicle’s surroundings that humans would be able to understand. Along with other cars, the system can render pedestrians in addition to cyclists who narrowly pass by the vehicle.

The company says Waymo Driver can detect small objects and movements at a distance, such as a truck door in the middle of traffic and someone jumping out to deliver a package. It claims the AI can recognize steam emanating from utility holes and drive the vehicle through it, and understand the difference between a stop sign and its reflection.

Waymo has been testing its vehicles in San Francisco since 2009 and it ramped up its efforts in the city earlier this year. Its vehicles now clock north of 100,000 miles on SF’s roads every week. Between narrow streets, drastic changes in elevation and intersections right at the top of hills, San Francisco isn’t an easy city to drive in, which makes it an effective testing ground for AVs.

The company’s vehicles have autonomously driven more than 20 million miles on public roads as well as 20 billion miles in simulations. That’s a significant bank of data to draw from. Waymo says the AI can recognize and adapt to local driving behaviors, such as what lane to turn in at each intersection. According to the company, Waymo Driver can also mimic other vehicles’ behavior, such as in SF, where people tend to drive a little slower while going up steep slopes.

Fully autonomous driving is likely several years away from going mainstream, but it seems Waymo is making significant strides toward that goal. Hopefully, Waymo Driver is getting more comfortable around safety cones.

Elsewhere, Waymo is beefing up its autonomous truck ambitions. On Wednesday, the company announced that it’s building a trucking hub in Dallas-Fort Worth and partnering with Ryder to manage its fleet.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s AI Day event takes place today. According to an invitation, the company will provide attendees with “an inside look at what’s next for AI at Tesla beyond our vehicle fleet.” CEO Elon Musk said there’ll be a live stream of the event.

Twitter's latest round of updates are about to hit your DMs

Twitter is introducing several tweaks to its direct messaging functionality, with the improvements set to roll out in the coming weeks. To start, you can now share the same tweet with up to 20 different accounts separately. As the company points out, that’s an improvement that should lead to fewer accidental group chats. The feature is currently rolling out now to iOS and web users, with an expansion on Android to follow “soon.”

On mobile, the company is also adding a quick-scroll button so you can quickly jump to the most recent message in a conversation when glancing over any past correspondence. As an iOS owner, you will also find Twitter has cleaned up timestamps by grouping messages by date. Additionally, if you long press on something someone sends you, there’s a new reaction picker.

While none of the tweaks Twitter announced today are groundbreaking, they’re handy all the same. They should also be less controversial than the font change the company pushed out last week.

Oops, Lauren Boebert Somehow Forgot to Disclose Her Husband’s Nearly $1 Million in Gas Consulting Contracts

Rep. Lauren Boebert has trotted out standard right-wing pablum when it comes to climate from bizarre Green New Deal rants to lies about hamburgers to trying to block the U.S. from reentering the Paris Agreement as one of her first official acts in Congress. She also introduced legislation to ban moratoriums on oil and…

Read more…

OnlyFans Is Banning 'Sexually-Explicit Content.' Yes, Really

OnlyFans is kicking potentially millions of small entrepreneurs to the curb by placing new limits on the types of content it will allow on its platform. Namely, the content that made you know what OnlyFans is in the first place.

Read more…

The New Moto Edge Is Trying to Walk a Fine Line Between Mid-Range and Premium

Last year after a long hiatus, Moto returned the flagship phone market with the Edge+ to somewhat middling success. So now for this year’s refresh, Motorola seems to have adjusted its ambitions downward to better straddle the line between mid-range and premium.

Read more…

Unreal Engine 4.27 released with latest in-camera VFX tools

Unreal Engine 4.27 was released today with the latest set of In-Camera VFX tools and other virtual production features aplenty. This new build works with a new 3D Config Editor, nDisplay features newly organized into a single nDisplay Root Actor, and features that aim to make working with nDisplay both easy and potentially massively powerful. This version of Unreal Engine … Continue reading

NVIDIA CEO doesn’t expect GPU shortage to end anytime soon

If you were hoping that we were approaching the end of the GPU shortage, you might want to settle in for the long haul. While there have been indications of the semiconductor shortage easing a little bit, some high-level executives within the industry have suggested that it may still be a long time before supply can catch up entirely with … Continue reading

Cricket mobile customers get HBO Max perk, but you need the right plan

Prepaid carrier Cricket Wireless has announced a new perk that is typically only available to postpaid mobile customers: free access to a major streaming service. The new HBO Max perk will be available to some Cricket subscribers starting tomorrow, August 20, though it only includes the ad-supported video streaming plan. Though bundled streaming service perks aren’t unusual for contract and … Continue reading

Matthew Rosenberg and Tyler Boss' Next Comic Is a Musical Journey Through the Post-Apocalypse

What’s the most important thing in the post-apocalypse? Your tools to survive, the trust network of friends, family, and allies you’ve made along the way? Or is it… your record collection? The next comic series from Matthew Rosenberg and Tyler Boss, together again in the world of comics since their breakout Black…

Read more…