The dark side of OnlyFans, the social network where "easy money" is not so innocuous

OnlyFans, the well-known social network for pornographic content between individuals —which can be accessed by paying a monthly subscription— has made erotic production never been so accessible. Both in its consumption and in its generation. Despite how easy it is to think of earning money after posting videos or photographs engaging in sexual practices, the dangers it hides go beyond a simple nude.

This web portal has spawned a whole new sphere of "amateur pornography 2.0", in which anyone could consider creating a profile or paying for one. In addition, the consumption of this type of content is spreading more and more among the population. Despite the fact that Twitter prohibits any sexual content in its rules and policies, a large part of the OnlyFans profiles are advertised on this social network, making their consumption more accessible and free.

During the pandemic, OnlyFans has gained 500,000 users every day and has billed 2,000 million in all of 2020. According to Bloomberg, the page keeps a commission of 20% of the payments made by users. With these figures and level of traffic, there are cases like the model Bella Thorne who claims to have earned a million dollars in one day with her content.

"Not everyone does it for fun"

Alejandro, a 26-year-old, started on OnlyFans a couple of years ago at a time when he was not "very well financially" . More than a job, he considered it as "something temporary" since he needed that money. To this day, he has left the platform since it affected him at various points in his personal life. "Not everyone does it for fun, people think it's easy money, but no," he says.

The boy explains to El Independiente how, in addition to the monthly subscription, someone can ask you by private message, for example, for a photo of your feet or shipments of your used and stained underwear after payment. "There are people who really became obsessed with me, they have come to harass me and ask me if I was still recording videos," he details. The OnlyFans terms of service, in its article 5.1, establishes that a "fan" can pay in advance an amount to "view the content of the user or interact" with it "according to the terms contained in this agreement."

The young man reports that at first it is "very easy" to get "a lot of money", but keeping up requires uploading stronger and more explicit content. "There you lose the freedom of the content that you think you control, you end up prostituting yourself," he says. To continue generating traffic, many models tend to collaborate with each other, something that Alejandro has never done. Added to this are the leaks of videos and photographs, which according to Alejandro are "very easy to do."

Direct consequences on their mental health

“I already knew this was going to happen and you can report it so that certain content is removed from a web page,” he asserts. Likewise, he affirms that it is "very common" for this type of material to circulate through Telegram groups. On the other hand, Alejandro emphasizes that the money one earns through this activity has to be declared once more than $10,000 in earnings is exceeded, but he does not detail in what quality and conditions.

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She has currently left the portal, but claims that this "loss of control" has directly affected the way she has and has had sex. «At first you want to monetize everything, any sexual relationship you have, you think that you have not managed to record it. By staying alone with that I did not enjoy, “he details.

He also states that it has taken a lot of work to return to having sexual relations in a satisfactory way. "It has cost me a lot from hypersexualizing myself so much, you distort sex so much that it has cost me to recover my livid," she says. «At the end of the day you sell your body, your image, you are completely exposed. They sell it to you as something you can control and not.

More "dangerous" than one thinks

The algorithm that OnlyFans follows, when it comes to generating more income, is a monetization based on the more sexual content one uploads, the more the o can earn the model. Mabel Lozano, author of the book PornoXplotación, affirms that this way of functioning perpetuates “prostitution 2.0”. Lozano details that the possibility of making individualized requests to the model to be recorded or photographed in a certain way is a covert form of extortion.

"Therefore, it's very easy to get into sextortion" — blackmail with a picture or video of someone naked or performing sexual acts that is often shared to go viral through sexting — he says. "People are not aware that once you upload a sexual video or photograph to the Internet you will never get it back, it is a mistake to think that the creators own that content," the filmmaker warns. Many times these videos end up in pornographic containers as accessible as PornHub or in the deep web itself.

“Now what works is live and amateur pornography, it has never been as accessible and aggressive as it is now. Onlyfans is not a portal as innocuous as one thinks”, Mabel Lozano details to El Independiente. «It has many consequences and there are more and more young people there. Then it is very difficult to leave ». On the other hand, it joins how the pandemic has been a turning point in the sexual habits of our society. The expert affirms that numerous sex workers with confinement have gone to the social network to continue obtaining income.

"Big" differences with the production companies

Bel Gris, producer and actor at Tetatita.com, affirms that the differences "are big" with conventional pornographic production companies. “As a producer, I have the responsibility to demand tests for STDs and venereal diseases, and now for Covid-19. We always shoot with a condom", something that, according to his own words, "does not happen" in the collaborations between OnlyFans models. "It is not the same quality, it is usually a content very from here I catch you here I kill you," he acknowledges.

On the other hand, Gris reports that someone who has a profile on the portal causes "their reputation to drop" when it comes to participating or not in recordings by their production company. "They are people who burn their image on the Internet a lot at a very cheap cost," she says. Despite the fact that some couples who shoot with Tetatita.com later post their own content on OnlyFans, he once had to deal with a content leak on the portal, something that without express consent is considered a crime.

Likewise, Bel says that the success of the platform means "tough competition" for them by reaching "a lot of people" and the "brutal" traffic it generates. "It is a market share with which I cannot compete, but it is that their rules of the game are not the same as they are not responsible for what happens with their content."

Lastly, Alejandro (26 years old), after leaving OnlyFans, reflects on to what extent what he has done is prostitution or not. "It ends up being, it's an open door and many people sell it as empowering because they can display themselves however they want and want," he says. "At the end of the day, acknowledging it is quite strong, and people should ask themselves who and why are they there."