At least two executives at Meta (parent company of Facebook) were accused of participating in a bribery scheme to help elevate the reach of OnlyFans, a company notorious for porn.
A newly revealed court filing exposed two Facebook executives and a third employee in a California lawsuit accusing them of “accepting bribes on behalf of OnlyFans as part of a scheme to help the adult platform dominate its industry rivals,” according to Gizmodo’s “exclusive” reporting on the document Wednesday.
The lawsuit accuses Meta Global Affairs President Nicholas Clegg, Meta Global Business Group Vice President Nicola Mendelsohn, and a third employee identified as Cristian Perrella as having been “wired money” from OnlyFans owner Fenix International Limited.
Gizmodo wrote that the executives were reportedly identified “by mistake” in the suit brought by “adult entertainers alleging bribery and abuse of internet databases meant to flag, among other things, terrorism related content.” The payments, according to the plaintiffs, were made to “two trust accounts in the Philippines under Meta executives’ names.”
Meta, corporate parent company over Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, supposedly prohibits ads from containing “adult content. This includes nudity, depictions of people in explicit or suggestive positions, or activities that are overly suggestive or sexually provocative.” The lawsuit’s revelations appear to run counter to the apparent goal of the platform’s “Adult Content” policy.
Gizmodo reported that Meta “denied the claims.” However, “its lawyers are less focused on proving the allegations false, than arguing, even if true, that Meta would still be immune.” Meta also reportedly hid behind its Section 230 protections to claim that it was immune: “Meta further argued that, even if true, any decisions to penalize OnlyFans’ competitors would have been protected by the company’s First Amendment rights, and the limited liability protections offered by Section [230] of the Communications Decency Act.”
Gizmodo reported: “Unnamed Meta employees were accused this February in an ongoing lawsuit of working under the table to secretly aid OnlyFans by getting its competitors ‘blacklisted’ online. The suit, filed in San Francisco federal court by a group of online adult entertainers, claims that Meta employees used databases meant to warn companies about safety and security threats to instead limit the visibility, and thus click rate, of entertainers working almost everywhere but OnlyFans.”
Northern District of California Senior District Judge William Alsup, according to a transcript reportedly obtained by Gizmodo, “asked an OnlyFans attorney outright whether the bribery claims were true during a Sept. 8 hearing: ‘Do you deny that that’s what happened?’ he asked.” The attorney reportedly “said their client hadn’t been required to answer that question yet, adding: ‘We will.’”
The revelations come after Facebook endured heavy fire in March 2022 after liberal outlet WIRED claimed extensive evidence of the problem of “child predation” and grooming on the platform. The piece about online “child predation” also insisted that Facebook isn’t taking proper action to combat sexual targeting of minors; in fact, Facebook reportedly reviewed at least one group and determined it did not violate its rules.
The porn giant OnlyFans boasts how it’s part of the “cultural zeitgeist” accepting “creators from all genres.” It currently touts 1,500,000-plus “content creators” and over 150,000,000 “registered users.”
Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram have sordid histories of button-mashing the censorship switch to silence speech that cuts against the left’s narratives on COVID-19, elections and abortion, among other issues. Former One America News Network personality Justine Murray blasted Facebook in October 2021 for censoring pro-life groups like Live Action, while protecting “smut merchants who exploit women and misuse their identities to pedal porn.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact Facebook headquarters at 650-308-7300 and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
