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OnlyFans wants its fans back

Good morning! This Thursday, OnlyFans does an about-face on its porn ban plan, YouTube removed millions of COVID-19 misinfo videos, and Microsoft makes a big promotion.
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In a move that shocked everyone and no one at the same time, OnlyFans reversed course yesterday on its upcoming porn ban, announcing it had "suspended" the plan just five days after its inception. The company told Protocol its ban was "no longer required due to banking partners' assurances that OnlyFans can support all genres of creators," and then refused to answer any other questions.
Sex workers are feeling extremely burned and very unwilling to forgive, as I wrote about here this week. Thousands of creators have already started moving their accounts over to competitors like JustFor.fans, and they aren't planning to stop. Because OnlyFans just "suspended" its porn ban, and has provided very little explanation aside from faulting banks for making it difficult to pay creators, people are skeptical that the new edict is a permanent one.
But was the ban really about the banking partners? Everyone in the sex work world is very skeptical, even more so now. The company had reportedly been seeking VC investment and more-mainstream cred, so speculation has swirled as to whether that was part of the motivation for the ban.
OnlyFans learned a hard and important lesson here: Sex workers have an enormous amount of power because they are incredibly popular internet stars and rake in huge sums of money. Sex will always sell, even if it isn't actually sexy to financiers and LPs and conservative groups. There are real problems with illegal online sexual material, especially child sex abuse material, but banning porn from the mainstream internet and financial sector doesn't solve that issue, nor does it make anyone in the legitimate sex work industry happy.
After a year and a half of living and working through a pandemic, it's no surprise that employees are sending out stress signals at record rates. Just as with building a healthier lifestyle, enacting measures of support on the day-to-day level is where lasting change is made.
On Protocol | Policy: Bigger businesses are better equipped to lobby, says Reed Showalter, an American Economic Liberties Project fellow:
Twitch tried to address hate raids, but the raids have only gotten worse, said streamer RekItRaven:
On Protocol | Workplace: If companies weren't so caught up in background checks, they'd have less trouble finding talent, executive search and DEI consultant Cecyl Hobbs says:
Xiaomi is buying Deepmotion, an autonomous driving startup, for $77.4 million as the company tries to move into the self-driving world.
Rocket Lab is now public. The space company completed its merger with a SPAC and is now valued at $4.8 billion in equity.
Charlie Bell is joining Microsoft as a CVP. He was a longtime AWS exec, and a presumptive candidate to replace Andy Jassy there before Adam Selipsky got the job.
Manish Lachwani, Headspin's co-founder and former CEO, was arrestedon charges of securities fraud and wire fraud.
Panos Panay is now part of Microsoft's senior leadership team. That makes Microsoft's chief product officer part of Satya Nadella's closest group of advisors.
Netflix is organizing its first global fan event, called Tudum, which will be streamed on YouTube, Twitch and Twitter next month.
Big Tech has made it pretty clear that autonomous cars are the future. What's less clear is when these vehicles will become mainstream.
In the book "Driven," Business Insider reporter Alex Davies follows how automakers and tech leaders slowly latched on to self-driving vehicles, going all the way back to that infamous DARPA Grand Challenge. While we sit back and watch tech giants race to build these vehicles, Davies unpacks what we all really know to be true: This massive change isn't going to happen that fast, however exciting the prospect is.
According to Blissfully's 2019 SaaS Trends Report, the average employee uses at least eight apps a day to get their work done. To lower the amount of context-switching team members have to do, decrease the number of tools they need to monitor throughout the day.
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Correction:Yesterday's newsletter misstated Sheryl Sandberg's relationship with her co-donor; she donated with her fiancé.
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