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Bella Thorne, OnlyFans and the battle over monetising content

164 points by clouddrover 6y ago

bilekas 6y ago
So she already makes 8k a month from her subscriptions and thats scraping by ? Sorry if I dont feel any sympathy.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Traster 6y ago
  Quote >Ms Michelle has 550 fans and makes $8,000 a month, charging a $30 subscription fee to users. She also relies on tips ranging from $5-$200 for pay-per-view photos, videos and text messages. >She says her OnlyFans work is the only way she can support her family due to the pandemic, and fears many other content creators will struggle to make ends meet going forward.
  - colesantiago 6y ago
    >She says her OnlyFans work is the only way she can support her family due to the pandemic, and fears many other content creators will struggle to make ends meet going forward. Really? There's always working at Walmart, Target or even collecting an income from Patreon?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - Eldt 6y ago
      Really? How well do they pay?
      - colesantiago 6y ago
        Well enough to make at least some additional income, really bad to put all your eggs in one platform.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      A grocery store doesn’t pay $8k a month (unless you’re a manager at that store)
      - colesantiago 6y ago
        Sure, I am all for creators not going to work at a grocery store, there are other options for them to make an income, and it doesn't even have to be forever.
    - pascah7 6y ago
      Do you really think that everyone can work at Walmart, Target, etc? And I'm referring to the fact that those companies can hire only so many people in one location.
      - colesantiago 6y ago
        Yes you can. Walmart, Amazon and Target are doing just fine, when worst comes to the worst, there are options. And also you can do both.
    - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      Those are closed, restricted or its employees furloughed due to the 'rona and won't pay nearly as much as selling pictures on the internet. Patreon has the same issues and a different model - less personalized, and you get paid per creation (or per month), instead of the individual sale model that Onlyfans seems to have (based on this article). Not as much space for personalized requests either.
      - colesantiago 6y ago
        > Patreon has the same issues? But creators can still make money on this platform no? I see most creators there, what are these 'issues'?
    - kpmcc 6y ago
      The good ole “get a job” reply. You hate to see it.
      - colesantiago 6y ago
        Who said "get a job?" For everyone else on the platform, probably yes? If I was them I would consider options.
    - aczerepinski 6y ago
      Can you really support a family working at Walmart? I can’t even imagine trying to do that. Rent in a modest apartment in my town would be like 2/3 of your income.
      - colesantiago 6y ago
        I'm sure poor Bella would be fine, everybody else on the platform making less than that might want to reconsider their monthly spending.
      - kikokikokiko 6y ago
        If your only option available is a Walmart job, you definately should NOT be having kids. Society used to judge things like irresponsible pregnancies, and everybody were way better off because of that.
        srtjstjsj 6y ago
        Everybody except, you know, the families who were permanently destroyed.
        slothtrop 6y ago
        Fertility rate scales with poverty. Those earning middle-class wages or higher tend to have fewer kids, or none. Much is linked to education and access to contraceptives. People will have sex, period. Shaming people for having kids helps at nothing. > Society used to judge things like irresponsible pregnancies, and everybody were way better off because of that. Revisionist delusional fantasy. In Western society people had far more children a couple of generations ago, regardless of wealth. The Church pressured this as well.
        kikokikokiko 6y ago
        Yes, people tended to have way more children. And pregnancies out of wedlock were way less prevalent too. Having two Walmart paychecks instead of one per household will make it way easier to raise a family. But nowadays single moms are heralded as heroes... so-much-progress. Such progressive times.
    - Pfhreak 6y ago
      Retail jobs introduce a higher risk of catching corona, pay terribly (likely close to minimum wage, which isn't enough), are terrible banal working environments, require travel to and from each day, have schedules that might not work for this person, etc. There are tons of valid reasons why someone can't "just get a job at Walmart".
      - MisterBastahrd 6y ago
        I see you missed the "only way" part. She isn't doing this because it's the only way she can make a living. She's doing it because it's the easiest way to make money.
      - jrnichols 6y ago
        That sounds a lot like my job as a Paramedic, actually. At least Walmart got hazard pay. We were specifically exempted from it. I too lack sympathy that she's only making $8,000/mo on OnlyFans. Reality is that she may have to adjust her lifestyle like hundreds of thousands if not millions of other people have.
  - rblatz 6y ago
    That $8,000 has to be after taxes. Because after OnlyFans cut she should be taking home $13,500.
    - Pfhreak 6y ago
      Does a 'fan' imply a subscriber? That could be the difference between a follower and a subscriber.
      - lovegoblin 6y ago
        > Does a 'fan' imply a subscriber? Yes. Generally there is no "free" tier.
        Pfhreak 6y ago
        Thanks. I'm not familiar. I know that Twitch, for instance, has a separate concepts for subscriber (pays money) and follower (wants updates on the person).
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  8k a month, but that is pre-tax, pre-healthcare, etc. Supporting a family and paying for health insurance for them is going to knock that number down real fast. Depending on where this person lives, yes that absolutely could be scraping by. Even more so if they have a family member who needs special care, or they are paying for someone's education.
  - collyw 6y ago
    It not like it is hard work. You could easily do a second job at the same time.
    - Pfhreak 6y ago
      It's presumably a huge amount of work. There's the work of setting up the shoot and the performance itself, then the photo editing, managing and interacting with your community constantly, marketing, dealing with the finances/bookwork, researching and buying new equipment and clothing, etc etc etc. Just like successful twitch and YouTube channels, the behind the scenes work is hugely underestimated. You are trivializing the work of someone without any apparent understanding of the actual labor involved.
      - collyw 6y ago
        Most women I know under 30 seem to spend the majority of their time taking selfies and photos of each other, and i don't think they are posting on only fans. Seems trivial enough to me. The fact that most fans seemed to think it wasn't worth the money implies something similar.
    - schreiaj 6y ago
      I could easily say that typing at a computer doesn’t look like hard work and you could easily get a second job to a dev. They’d tell you that the part you see doesn’t tell the whole story. Maybe don’t judge a person only by what you can see.
  - jimbob45 6y ago
    That’s 96k per year. Assuming 20k in taxes and 10k in health insurance (both very generous numbers), that’s still 66k per year. Outside of some Californian cities, 66k is more than enough to lead a comfortable life on.
znpy 6y ago
It's funny to see this people complaining about losing their cash cow. In all honesty, Kudos to them for milking those crazy amount of money off the platform (and the people). But in all seriousness: 1. one can't seriously believe that easy money will always be this easy and abundant 2. competition drives the prices down and fighting the stigma on sex workers drives the competition up. I'm not being judgemental or anything, it's just that the whole argument does not make sense, at all. And btw as soon as something stops being a subculture, people like Bella Thorne will start showing up. It's sad, but happens in every space/environment.
- Sebb767 6y ago
  > 1. one can't seriously believe that easy money will always be this easy and abundant 2. competition drives the prices down and fighting the stigma on sex workers drives the competition up. Yes, but that totally misses the point. The problem is that the pictures (presumably) weren't as advertised and so OnlyFans lowered the price ceiling for everyone to reduce future losses. The complaint isn't that people don't pay, but that the plattform stopped allowing high paid work. And in all honesty, it is a bad way to handle the situation. Pulling posts with a high number of complaints, holding the money for a few days or only setting a limit for new accounts would've been a superior solution by far, at least in my opinion.
  - jonathanliu 6y ago
    > And in all honesty, it is a bad way to handle the situation. Pulling posts with a high number of complaints, holding the money for a few days or only setting a limit for new accounts would've been a superior solution by far, at least in my opinion. Right, that's my confusion too. Why not just hold creator revenue a bit longer and then make chargebacks during that period their liability?
- kpmcc 6y ago
  “One can’t seriously believe that easy money will always be this way and abundant”. Idk man have you heard of the federal reserve? Money will be easy and abundant for those at the top, and dear and capricious for the disempowered.
wirthjason 6y ago
“She charges up to $40 for lingerie pictures and videos or for content that implies nudity; $165 for topless photos and $200 for nude images and videos.” I don’t get it. Who has the income to drop hundreds of dollars on pictures like this?!?! The internet is filled with tons of free images and videos. I can’t see the point. I guess the “item” being sold isn’t just the image/video but rather the “interaction” and maybe personalization.
- helipad 6y ago
  I suppose you don't need income so much as a credit line.
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  My hypotheses: Some people want to pay creators, support specific individuals, or feel like they have a connection to someone in particular. If this is what someone's discretionary budget is allocated to, more power to them.
  - chillwaves 6y ago
    This is a big part of it, at least in smaller communities. People want to show their gratitude. It's more relevant to the Twitch conversations. OF is basically all paid members where twitch, the ratio is probably 20:1 or worse, free to paid. The people who are paying are doing so because they want to, not because they have to. That's one big difference between Twitch and Onlyfans.
- hippodou 6y ago
  I'd pay a few hundred dollars for nudes of some women I know if they're happy to sell them with informed consent. Seeing someone you know naked is a lot more interesting than seeing a random person naked.
  - hackinthebochs 6y ago
    This. It's strange how many people will rationalize that all nude images are interchangeable, so no one should pay for porn. It's so obviously not true for most people.
pstrateman 6y ago
High cost individual transactions sounds like elevated fraud risk. I bet this isn't even their decision. (Card processor is probably making them do this).
- jonathanliu 6y ago
  > I bet this isn't even their decision. (Card processor is probably making them do this). This is my thinking as well. Why else would OF willingly limit their own revenue? I doubt it's due to sincere concern for customer well-being.
  - mcphage 6y ago
    > Why else would OF willingly limit their own revenue? Support for arbitrarily high transactions might be a net negative for their revenue, if the chargeback rate is high enough.
  - mtnGoat 6y ago
    this wouldnt suprise me, i remember back when i was working with adult content, we couldnt sell subscriptions over a certain price, even if they were for years. i think this rule is still in place.
- chard_slicks_ 6y ago
  From what I understand Bella Thorne promised full nude images. When the image that users payed for wasn't full nude this upset many users. Since OnlyFans lacks a refund system many users issued charge backs in order to get their money back. The large number of chargebacks are what prompted OnlyFans to make the changes.
  - gpm 6y ago
    For the Bella Thorne case in particular, it seems like it could be handled by onlyfans creating their own refund/fraud system. Returning money received fraudulently seems reasonable and unlikely to be challenged by content creators (whom you are presumably clawing it back from). A short "escrow" period to enable this seems unlikely to be challenged by content creators. The problematic case for chargebacks are probably "all the other ones" that aren't demonstrable fraud.
strikelaserclaw 6y ago
thirsty dudes are big business.
- chillwaves 6y ago
  This is the perfect TL:DR. Lots of talk here by confused techbros thinking about how they can cash in on this goldmine. They should read your comment.
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    So how do you cater to thirsty dudes? If you can harness women, then you are rich. Simple as that. Notice how anything like this will always be male owned. It might seem like women are profiting in the short run, but ultimately they have nothing unique to offer and as supply increases they'll see diminished returns. Meanwhile the male owned business will only grow as demand won't shrink and they're creaming off all of it.
    - myaccount275 6y ago
      >So how do you cater to thirsty dudes? Self improvement and self help (real or just promised) are big ways to make money in this area. >Notice how anything like this will always be male owned. I don't think it makes a difference to the individual creators whether the middle-man profiting from this is male or female. The creators don't get any better outcome either way.
      - globular-toast 6y ago
        Yes. But it's all about dangling the carrot of promised sex in front of men, no matter how you dress it up. Self help is like selling a cookery book while porn is like selling a takeaway. Most people will go the route of instant gratification rather than a slow and difficult path.
        myaccount275 6y ago
rvz 6y ago
An important reminder to all "content creators" on someone else's platform: What any monetisation platform can also give to them, they are more than able to take it away. Since it's their platform, they can do what they like. Best to just build your following there and move out and run your own show while you can.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  With some of the numbers shown, I'm amazed they're still using a party that takes 20% of their innings instead of hiring a web company to set up their own site. I wonder if they're trapped in exclusivity contracts (and get thrown out if they fire up their own site), or just afraid of losing followers if they migrate away from onlyfans.
  - mc32 6y ago
    Not being a fan I don’t know for sure, but I imagine having a platform where you have “choice” is probably a sticky feature of the site. Kinda like you’d rather shop Amazon than shop at a hundred different indiv stores.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    OnlyFans is doing most of the sales and marketing work here, which is 99% of the value (nude pictures of hot "models" are a commodity). Charging only 20% seems like a steal.
    - hackinthebochs 6y ago
      Actually, onlyfans does almost zero marketing work. There is almost no discovery on the site. The only ones making any substantial money are those with a built-in audience from other platforms.
  - vmchale 6y ago
    I mean, given the difficulty of payment processing for sex work...
  - 6y ago
colesantiago 6y ago
Is there a reason why people would want to pay for this OnlyFans content? Genuinely interested.
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  > Is there a reason why people would want to pay for this OnlyFans content? Genuinely interested. The same reason people would want to pay for porn, I guess... the difference is that they get some kind of "exclusive" pornography. I see it has become a serious money making gig for some. Making $8000 is no small money for a lot of individuals. Definitely more than the average engineer salary in Europe.
  - jrnichols 6y ago
    It has. I think that the content creators are going to wind up with a lot of competition, just like pornhub, and a lot of them simply won't make it while others will get into more extreme/taboo things and enjoy their lucrative niche.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      > while others will get into more extreme/taboo things and enjoy their lucrative niche. Like a pro dom teaching civil engineering classes?
      - jrnichols 6y ago
        That could indeed be a lucrative niche!
        Gibbon1 6y ago
        I just remember a summer class at college. Some prat made the observation that everyone in the room was paying $40/hour for instruction and there were 25 of us. Hmm...
      - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
notyourday 6y ago
What happened is that the actual head showed up and squeezed everyone else into a tail. Previous tail has been pushed out into a long tail. If you have had a chance to work with the companies in the content scene, you would recognize the pattern. A couple of top tier accounts (head) account for the lion's share of hot content and hence monetization, the next level of accounts (tail) - dozens to hundreds - has some hot content and hence monetization but at a fraction of the previous tier. Finally the rest of the accounts have nearly no hot content and hence no monetization (long tail). From an outside perspective based strictly on the content itself it is very difficult to determine the difference between tail and long tail. It is even unclear the difference between some of the long-tail and the head.
Ericson2314 6y ago
Not unlike the Spotify controversy where the middleman is happy to make it up in volume, even if the seller can't.
bena 6y ago
I honestly don't know what to think about the whole situation. In some ways, it feels like current content creators on OnlyFans are making the same complaints about Bella Thorne that certain communities were making about content creators on OnlyFans before. And there ain't no shame in their game. If people want to give OnlyFans creators money for any reason, as long as the money is theirs to give, etc, that's between them. What I think of the transaction is immaterial. It's about as useful as the closet full of Lego sets I have. And if people want to buy that content, why complain about the people providing it. No, it's not typically hard work. And let's all not pretend that it is. But. So what. Some people were just born wealthy. Some people just win the lottery. Or have some other windfall. Not all wealth is earned through hard work. That's just the way it is. I mean, look at all the people featured in the article. They're all attractive women. And more power to them if they've found a way they don't have to work hard to earn themselves some money. But it really feels like the current creators are complaining about Throne because she doesn't have to work as hard. Or that she's had automatic reach due to her celebrity status. That she doesn't even have to get nude to get this money. And that's the complaints made about the majority of creators by the people who cannot leverage the platform like they can. And it's not like the money sent to Thorne was going to affect the money sent to other creators. It's not like OnlyFans has $X a month to split between creators based on subscriptions. No, individuals choose to subscribe to specific creators. The people signed up to subscribe to Thorne weren't subscribing to OnlyFans because they like OnlyFans, they were signing up to OnlyFans to subscribe to Thorne. Take her away and they don't even sign up. And the cap limits are another thing in this debacle. They're trying to put the blame for that on Thorne, but really, that's a move that was going to come sooner or later. OnlyFans needs the subscribers more than the creators. The content is pretty fungible in all honesty. So OnlyFans will take measures to make sure the bleed is as slow as possible. On the other hand, I get why they're frustrated by all this. It can be difficult to watch someone waltz in and crush something you've been chipping away at for a while. It can be difficult to have the terms of a platform suddenly change under you and impact your income. Those are valid frustrations. I'm just not sure if it's a frustration that's actionable on their part. I think they just may have to suck this one up.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  The alternative is also to stake out on their own and create their own platforms. OnlyFans is not quite the only game in town putting videos and posts behind a paywall.
un_montagnard 6y ago
I'm wondering if what actually happened is that Onlyfans leveraged the backlash around Bella Thorne to implement the limits they have been thinking about for a while, instead of implementing those as a reaction.
- collyw 6y ago
  Do they charge a flat fee or some kind of commission? If its a flat fee I guess it would be in their interest if its commission it wouldn't.
  - un_montagnard 6y ago
    It's commission based I believe. But it could still be in their interest to mitigate chargebacks for example.
    - loktarogar 6y ago
      Chargebacks are HUGE in this field and all the mitigations you might find as part of your big payment processor don't apply because eg. Stripe don't allow any of this kind of thing on their platform.
      - CryptoBanker 6y ago
        That's funny because OnlyFans uses Stripe...
        loktarogar 6y ago
        Ah, wasn't aware. One of my contract positions right now is in a sex worker field and a lot of the infrastructure and billing needs to be done themselves.
        chrischen 6y ago
        In some other HN thread it was explained that they use multiple CC processors, and only use Stripe on the non forbidden by Stripe stuff.
jmnicolas 6y ago
Time and time again we see the danger of letting an outside entity manage things for you. They make things easy for you but when you disagree with the way they run things you're often left sol. And the cost to exit the platform is much higher now.
cassalian 6y ago
The outrage at Bella Thorne seems misguided... After all, she did not change the policies, only fans did. Did her actions increase only fans timelines for these changes? Maybe. But at the end of the day, I don't think that justifies the outrage Bella Thorne is receiving over this. Am I missing some action that she took that should justify the outrage: for instance, Bella meeting with only fans to demand that the maximum allowed tip be reduced?
- nickthegreek 6y ago
  After my first review of this situation, I agreed with your assessment but apparently she has not been very pro sex-worker while building off of the services that they have grown. It's still very difficult to find good info on this situation, because its all twitter and insta posts without a good paper trail.
  - cassalian 6y ago
    I too have been having issues with finding good info on this situation. Hopefully something will come to light that provides a little more explanation as to the anger directed at Bella. :shrug: I would not be surprised if this is just being blown up in the media because it involves sex workers which is sure to peak readers interest.
- btbuildem 6y ago
  I thought the issue was fraud: she charged for nudes but delivered non-nude photos.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    That was certainly fraud and a bad thing, yes. But some reports say OnlyFans has been planning these changes for some time - and by rolling them out now, they can make Bella Thorne take the heat instead of taking it themselves.
- jrnichols 6y ago
  Looking at Twitter, a lot of them are angry with her because she has actually be able to have a dialogue with OnlyFans and they have been unable to get anything more than canned messages. The fallout from this is not unexpected, and neither is the Schadenfreude from it.
debacle 6y ago
Many people massively underestimate the effects of tech voyeurism. Even relatively tame fans can be frighteningly deep in delusions of having a connection with someone who they have little to no interaction with. I encourage anyone perplexed by how Bella supports herself when there is no scarcity on the Internet to pornography to check out Twitch's Just Chatting category. Find a thumb of an attractive woman and click into her stream. You will find many viewers who act as though they have a personal relationship with a streamer. People respond in chat as though they are having a conversation with the streamer. People donate (sometimes $10+) just to have their message read on stream. Most disconcerting, you will find a non-negligible amount of people who are watching the stream + insulting the streamer in chat. These are people taking time out of their day to participate in targeted, anonymous hate.
- jonathanliu 6y ago
  https://i.redd.it/jl8phukm3pf11.jpg https://i.redd.it/jl8phukm3pf11.jpg Probably the most famous example.
  - Dirlewanger 6y ago
    One can either look at this superficially and just laugh at the guy, or can read deeper into it and realize that maybe the Internet isn't as great as we thought (personally I think it's been a net negative for society and humanity as a whole -- unlocking revenue for businesses isn't a positive in my eyes). There's now a whole generation of (mainly) men under ~35 who have been disenfranchised and are almost completely disconnected from their own reality. The Internet is their only conduit.
    - debacle 6y ago
      The Internet is made of people.
      - wirthjason 6y ago
        “Hell is other people” -JP Sartre
biophysboy 6y ago
When somebody like Bella Thorne wants to "destigmatize" sex work, what exactly is he she talking about? Does she just want more people to respect the profession outright? Because I think there are a number of hurdles to this, even if we completely ignore traditional views on sex/relationships that a huge fraction of the country holds. Sex workers are luxury service workers. The job is transient and alienating. I feel like there are legitimate reasons to be wary of sex work, even if you don't subscribe to "all sex for all people must be in dedicated long term relationships".
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  She's trying to get richer by being associated with sex without actually getting involved with it. She's "appropriating" sex work into a PG-13 version that further marginalized the people she claims to be supporting, while financially outcompeting them. IT work is transient and alienating too, but people do it because it pays the bills for their skills
- GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
  Sex workers are workers. But they don't have the same labor protections as any other blue collar or white collar job. The stigma from a cultural side is pretty small, especially given the millions of dollars flowing into online sex work. The stigma from sex work being in a legal grey zone affects those who rely on the income to support themselves and their family. Also I would be interested to know what other professions you consider "luxury service work" since I can't seem to find a proper definition readily.
  - biophysboy 6y ago
    Definitely agree with you on the labor protections - they are gig workers at the end of the day. And they're probably even less likely to "organize" (whatever that means nowadays) than other gig workers. By luxury service work, I mean something where you perform services for people with much higher than average disposable income. Basically think of all the bottom rung jobs in the most expensive parts of the most expensive cities.
  - 6y ago
btbuildem 6y ago
Strange response by OF, to cap the fees. They're actively limiting their own take (20% cut btw, kind of disgusting). I think the right thing to do would have been to refund those whom she defrauded with false advertising. If I understand the situation, she sold photos as one kind of content, but delivered something else in the end? If I bought a bag of potatoes but it turned out to be charcoal when I opened it, I'd bring it back to the store for a refund or exchange.
dvt 6y ago
For years, I was profoundly puzzled by people that are willing to give hundreds -- if not thousands -- of dollars to (mostly women) they'll never meet for what's basically freely available offline. I saw a very interesting mini-documentary on YouTube[0] not too long ago that kind of opened my eyes. The idea here is that places like Onlyfans, and to a lesser extent Twitch, monetize loneliness via parasocial relationships[1]. This is fundamentally different than being a fan of, say, an actress like Emma Stone, or an athlete like LeBron James. Viewers (the subject) actually believe they have a relationship with the object (be they a pro gamer or scantily-clad model). To most well-adjusted folks with a healthy social circle, this seems kind of nuts, but parasocial relationships have a long and sordid history -- starting with the invention of the "fireside chat" on radio. Loneliness is a powerful motivator and the psychology here is profoundly interesting. At the end of the day, I'd say places like Onlyfans end up being net negatives for both the models as well as the fans. It's a bit sick that the internet -- the very thing which was supposed to bring people together -- ends up cannibalizing its own. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djMojvschs0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djMojvschs0 [1] https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100305809 https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20...
- valuearb 6y ago
  Aren’t the women on OnlyFans monetizing it in a positive manner? Don’t base your world view on anecdotes from a carefully edited documentary. In reality almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy, so what’s wrong with fantasies?
  - dvt 6y ago
    > Don’t base your world view on anecdotes from a carefully edited documentary. In reality almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy, so what’s wrong with fantasies? I'm not sure what you mean. The documentary seemed fairly middle-of-the-road and interviewed both fans as well as models. It's pretty clear that parasocial relationships aren't healthy (whether it's with a game show host or an Onlyfans model), so I would definitely push back against "almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy."
renewiltord 6y ago
Is it primarily a biological or cultural phenomenon that most creators of this content are women and most consumers of the content are men? Honestly, I don't know if that's true, but from what little this intersects with my news feed it appears to be true.
- kvgr 6y ago
  Most woman can get attention at some appropriate level. Even if not coolest, prettiest, smartest. A lot of man can't. And the way to get together to be attractive is sometimes hard. Better to pay for only fans than to shoot up some place...
  - actuator 6y ago
    But is paid attention worth it, wouldn't it end up making you feel hollow once that interaction is over and you realize how made up the whole thing was.
    - chongli 6y ago
      If you can get paid attention then you can get free attention. I would imagine a lot of these female performers are already in relationships. They just work very hard to conceal their relationships online in order to preserve the illusion for their fans.
      - actuator 6y ago
        I was talking about the males who are paying, not the female performers. They definitely should be able to get attention, and for them from an economic opportunity perspective this makes complete sense.
        chongli 6y ago
        Oh in that case I don't think they realize how hollow it is, at least not at first. The top performers (on Twitch, anyway, I have never visited OnlyFans) work very hard to keep their top donors happy. They thank them profusely, grant them moderator status, single out their chat messages to read and respond to on stream, and likely even chat with them in private messages after the stream. Anything to maintain the illusion that this is a real relationship rather than a transactional one. This is why OnlyFans was created in the first place: a site outside of the rules of Twitch terms of service that lets performers take things "to the next level" with their top donors. It's like the VIP room in a strip club. Edit to add more thoughts: I think strip clubs are the right analogy for how to evaluate these channels (the "just chatting" ones and any of the gaming ones that prominently feature very attractive performers). They are fundamentally about creating and maintaining an illusion with the (usually male viewers). Unfortunately, this can be very dangerous. It's pretty common knowledge that strippers are much more likely to suffer violence than the average woman. They may be safer than street-walking prostitutes, but nowhere near as safe as a woman in a white-collar job. How safe are these streamers in the long run? The distance and pseudonymity provided by the internet may afford a level of safety, compared to the closeness of a strip club. On the other hand, streamers can have several orders of magnitude more viewers than even the largest of strip clubs. A large viewer count can magnify the risk that one disillusioned fan decides to "go rogue" and stalk the streamer, dox her, and attack her in person. I would not be surprised if we see a case of serious violence (or murder) against a top streamer within a few years.
mrkramer 6y ago
I wonder why Instagram is not doing this; free tier are your profile photos premium are paid ones. But there should be a line between non adult and adult, YouTube chose not to host porn and I think they did the right thing.
- antihero 6y ago
  Because AFAIK Instagram and Facebook's apps rely on them not being adult platforms due to the App Store and Play Store guidelines.
  - mrkramer 6y ago
    I forgot adult apps are banned on App Store and Play Store, so adult apps can only run on Android devices by providing .apk file to users while being completely banned on iOS?! Weird situation for adult entrepreneurs.
  - paxys 6y ago
    Even outside of app stores, adult content in general is a massive hole that no large company wants to touch. There's a ton of overhead due to scams/chargebacks, harm to the brand, content moderation and lots more.
- jrnichols 6y ago
  That's what many use Instagram for now, though, just a vehicle to their OnlyFans account. Unfortunately, the OnlyFans "creators" have also flocked to reddit and spam it relentlessly. So bad that quite a few subreddits have had to ban "sellers" who were drowning out the other users.
palindrome818 6y ago
There are 2 very different reasons for using OnlyFans. 1. Sex workers are using it to offer a luxury service (The Girlfriend Experience) to clients, virtually. It's taking something that used to be only available to the very wealthy and making it scalable. 2. Celebrities like Bella Thorne, Tana Mongeau and Cardi B are using it as a means of publicity, similar to the sex tape strategy used by Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton. (There's a good doc about this on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsK_6VSmlMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsK_6VSmlMI)
- afiori 6y ago
  I though that for Kim Kardashian it was about riding the wave of a fake sex tape and for Paris Hilton an actual leak she didn't profit from (similarly to Jennifer Lawrence)
  - palindrome818 6y ago
    Everyone claims that it was leaked, but both of the sex tapes were timed to come out during the first season of Keeping up with the Kardashians and the first season of The Simple Life. Life has a lot of coincidences, but the real question is- were they making lemonade from lemons OR is it artificial lemon juice, something that looks like lemons but isn't?
wizu 6y ago
When I was younger, I supported full legalisation of sex work because I thought that to disallow it would be to remove the agency of sex workers who had chosen that path as their profession. Then I got older and read accounts of sex workers trafficked to European countries where prostitution is legal I realised that some (but not all) sex workers are actually participating in "legal" transactions under duress. In my mind that invalidates the necessary consent required when the activity involves sex work of some kind, making it unethical from the buyer to acquire such a service despite it being legal locally. While trafficking is of course still illegal, I am unclear about the laws protecting trafficking victims from their "buyers" in non-consenting transactions. Since it is practically impossible to confirm if a given sex worker is participating under duress or not, especially when it occurs "remotely" as in this OnlyFans situation, I would say it is always unethical to purchase such services. In addition, what I would consider "under duress" is fairly broad, not only under threat of violence from traffickers, but also including economic duress where an individual feels that it is the only way to earn an income to put food on the table. In this vein, I would consider sex tourism to poorer countries a form of exploitation and thus unethical, even though one could argue the individuals from the poorer countries selling such services do so "willingly". This article writes that one of these women feels that she must engage in sex work through OnlyFans because it is "the only way she can support her family...". It leaves a bad taste as I would not consider that she is participating in the transaction without duress, and thus actually consenting in the transaction. Would you be okay with it if you knew that the woman you were buying lingerie pictures "had" to do it? How would that not be a form of exploitation? However, one can extend this argument to any type of work. "She says her _____ work is the only way she can support her family...", replace with an arbitrary line of work and activity (woodcutting/marketing/basketweaving). Is there any thing that makes sex work special (apart from some puritanical opinion which are not actually applicable), that would make such a transaction inherently more unethical than say being forced to work at McDonalds because it's the only way to make ends meet? Why would the latter more "ethical" than the former, when an individual is still "forced" to sell their labor to survive, what ever form that labor is?
- stouset 6y ago
  > Since it is practically impossible to confirm if a given sex worker is participating under duress or not, especially when it occurs "remotely" as in this OnlyFans situation, I would say it is always unethical to purchase such services. Applying this kind of blanket rule leads to all sorts of ridiculous conclusions. Can you verify that the people assembling the very device you wrote this post on aren't under similar amounts of duress as you clutch your pearls over in this comment?
ShaniceWilliams 6y ago
Big Yikes. B should give all that money she earned right back to the sex workers and only fans people she ripped off.
rasz 6y ago
My takeaway: Bella Thorne scammed tens of thousands of people, OnlyFans didnt kick her off the platform, WTF?
- theshrike79 6y ago
  You don't kick the golden goose. It's the same reason why the biggest Twitch stars can do pretty much anything on stream and not get banned, while normies get the banhammer immediately for lesser offences.
  - cblconfederate 6y ago
    it seems onlyfans has a different model, and they are profitable and don't need celebs. the story reads like Bella needed onlyfans, not vice versa
    - abiogenesis 6y ago
      I don't think so. I haven't heard of onlyfans until today, but it made into news because of a celebrity. Now more people have heard of them. Now I hadn't heard of Bella Thorne either, but that's a different story.
      - cblconfederate 6y ago
        considering that onlyfans and the like cater to porn , i doubt the publicity will much affect their bottom line if anything, the publicity and ensuing scrutiny these sites get usually leads to them getting shut down
      - biztos 6y ago
        In certain parts of the Internet, OnlyFans has been a huge deal for a long time, and most definitely not because of what you'd call "celebrities" anywhere outside those parts. It's also the primary source of income for a decent number of people. I've never been on Twitch and am only vaguely aware that anything like a celebrity exists in the video-gaming world. Couldn't name one to save my life. (And yes I know Twitch isn't just about games.) Edit: I have nothing against Twitch, just pointing out that it's easy to think something isn't well-known when it actually is, just not to people like you (or me).
ouid 6y ago
And here I though that the outrage was going to be over onlyfans charging 20%!
_pmf_ 6y ago
"Content"
lihaciudaniel 6y ago
SIMP culture existed way before this trend of onlyfans, you would know rhat
LandR 6y ago
> Ms Corbridge offers services ranging from $7-$25 "personalised penis ratings" What on earth! I guess I'm so out of touch with what some people are after on the internet.
- ornornor 6y ago
  Can you imagine getting a “F” for a penis rating you requested and paid for under the assumption that she’d be giving complacent ratings only?
bobwernstein 6y ago
Anyone know of any aggregate accounts? could be good business.

164 points by clouddrover 6y ago

bilekas 6y ago

So she already makes 8k a month from her subscriptions and thats scraping by ? Sorry if I dont feel any sympathy.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Traster 6y ago
Quote >Ms Michelle has 550 fans and makes $8,000 a month, charging a $30 subscription fee to users. She also relies on tips ranging from $5-$200 for pay-per-view photos, videos and text messages. >She says her OnlyFans work is the only way she can support her family due to the pandemic, and fears many other content creators will struggle to make ends meet going forward.
- colesantiago 6y ago
  >She says her OnlyFans work is the only way she can support her family due to the pandemic, and fears many other content creators will struggle to make ends meet going forward. Really? There's always working at Walmart, Target or even collecting an income from Patreon?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Eldt 6y ago
    Really? How well do they pay?
    - colesantiago 6y ago
      Well enough to make at least some additional income, really bad to put all your eggs in one platform.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    A grocery store doesn’t pay $8k a month (unless you’re a manager at that store)
    - colesantiago 6y ago
      Sure, I am all for creators not going to work at a grocery store, there are other options for them to make an income, and it doesn't even have to be forever.
  - pascah7 6y ago
    Do you really think that everyone can work at Walmart, Target, etc? And I'm referring to the fact that those companies can hire only so many people in one location.
    - colesantiago 6y ago
      Yes you can. Walmart, Amazon and Target are doing just fine, when worst comes to the worst, there are options. And also you can do both.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Those are closed, restricted or its employees furloughed due to the 'rona and won't pay nearly as much as selling pictures on the internet. Patreon has the same issues and a different model - less personalized, and you get paid per creation (or per month), instead of the individual sale model that Onlyfans seems to have (based on this article). Not as much space for personalized requests either.
    - colesantiago 6y ago
      > Patreon has the same issues? But creators can still make money on this platform no? I see most creators there, what are these 'issues'?
  - kpmcc 6y ago
    The good ole “get a job” reply. You hate to see it.
    - colesantiago 6y ago
      Who said "get a job?" For everyone else on the platform, probably yes? If I was them I would consider options.
  - aczerepinski 6y ago
    Can you really support a family working at Walmart? I can’t even imagine trying to do that. Rent in a modest apartment in my town would be like 2/3 of your income.
    - colesantiago 6y ago
      I'm sure poor Bella would be fine, everybody else on the platform making less than that might want to reconsider their monthly spending.
    - kikokikokiko 6y ago
      If your only option available is a Walmart job, you definately should NOT be having kids. Society used to judge things like irresponsible pregnancies, and everybody were way better off because of that.
      - srtjstjsj 6y ago
        Everybody except, you know, the families who were permanently destroyed.
      - slothtrop 6y ago
        Fertility rate scales with poverty. Those earning middle-class wages or higher tend to have fewer kids, or none. Much is linked to education and access to contraceptives. People will have sex, period. Shaming people for having kids helps at nothing. > Society used to judge things like irresponsible pregnancies, and everybody were way better off because of that. Revisionist delusional fantasy. In Western society people had far more children a couple of generations ago, regardless of wealth. The Church pressured this as well.
        kikokikokiko 6y ago
        Yes, people tended to have way more children. And pregnancies out of wedlock were way less prevalent too. Having two Walmart paychecks instead of one per household will make it way easier to raise a family. But nowadays single moms are heralded as heroes... so-much-progress. Such progressive times.
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    Retail jobs introduce a higher risk of catching corona, pay terribly (likely close to minimum wage, which isn't enough), are terrible banal working environments, require travel to and from each day, have schedules that might not work for this person, etc. There are tons of valid reasons why someone can't "just get a job at Walmart".
    - MisterBastahrd 6y ago
      I see you missed the "only way" part. She isn't doing this because it's the only way she can make a living. She's doing it because it's the easiest way to make money.
    - jrnichols 6y ago
      That sounds a lot like my job as a Paramedic, actually. At least Walmart got hazard pay. We were specifically exempted from it. I too lack sympathy that she's only making $8,000/mo on OnlyFans. Reality is that she may have to adjust her lifestyle like hundreds of thousands if not millions of other people have.
- rblatz 6y ago
  That $8,000 has to be after taxes. Because after OnlyFans cut she should be taking home $13,500.
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    Does a 'fan' imply a subscriber? That could be the difference between a follower and a subscriber.
    - lovegoblin 6y ago
      > Does a 'fan' imply a subscriber? Yes. Generally there is no "free" tier.
      - Pfhreak 6y ago
        Thanks. I'm not familiar. I know that Twitch, for instance, has a separate concepts for subscriber (pays money) and follower (wants updates on the person).
Pfhreak 6y ago
8k a month, but that is pre-tax, pre-healthcare, etc. Supporting a family and paying for health insurance for them is going to knock that number down real fast. Depending on where this person lives, yes that absolutely could be scraping by. Even more so if they have a family member who needs special care, or they are paying for someone's education.
- collyw 6y ago
  It not like it is hard work. You could easily do a second job at the same time.
  - Pfhreak 6y ago
    It's presumably a huge amount of work. There's the work of setting up the shoot and the performance itself, then the photo editing, managing and interacting with your community constantly, marketing, dealing with the finances/bookwork, researching and buying new equipment and clothing, etc etc etc. Just like successful twitch and YouTube channels, the behind the scenes work is hugely underestimated. You are trivializing the work of someone without any apparent understanding of the actual labor involved.
    - collyw 6y ago
      Most women I know under 30 seem to spend the majority of their time taking selfies and photos of each other, and i don't think they are posting on only fans. Seems trivial enough to me. The fact that most fans seemed to think it wasn't worth the money implies something similar.
  - schreiaj 6y ago
    I could easily say that typing at a computer doesn’t look like hard work and you could easily get a second job to a dev. They’d tell you that the part you see doesn’t tell the whole story. Maybe don’t judge a person only by what you can see.
- jimbob45 6y ago
  That’s 96k per year. Assuming 20k in taxes and 10k in health insurance (both very generous numbers), that’s still 66k per year. Outside of some Californian cities, 66k is more than enough to lead a comfortable life on.

znpy 6y ago

It's funny to see this people complaining about losing their cash cow. In all honesty, Kudos to them for milking those crazy amount of money off the platform (and the people). But in all seriousness: 1. one can't seriously believe that easy money will always be this easy and abundant 2. competition drives the prices down and fighting the stigma on sex workers drives the competition up. I'm not being judgemental or anything, it's just that the whole argument does not make sense, at all. And btw as soon as something stops being a subculture, people like Bella Thorne will start showing up. It's sad, but happens in every space/environment.

Sebb767 6y ago
> 1. one can't seriously believe that easy money will always be this easy and abundant 2. competition drives the prices down and fighting the stigma on sex workers drives the competition up. Yes, but that totally misses the point. The problem is that the pictures (presumably) weren't as advertised and so OnlyFans lowered the price ceiling for everyone to reduce future losses. The complaint isn't that people don't pay, but that the plattform stopped allowing high paid work. And in all honesty, it is a bad way to handle the situation. Pulling posts with a high number of complaints, holding the money for a few days or only setting a limit for new accounts would've been a superior solution by far, at least in my opinion.
- jonathanliu 6y ago
  > And in all honesty, it is a bad way to handle the situation. Pulling posts with a high number of complaints, holding the money for a few days or only setting a limit for new accounts would've been a superior solution by far, at least in my opinion. Right, that's my confusion too. Why not just hold creator revenue a bit longer and then make chargebacks during that period their liability?
kpmcc 6y ago
“One can’t seriously believe that easy money will always be this way and abundant”. Idk man have you heard of the federal reserve? Money will be easy and abundant for those at the top, and dear and capricious for the disempowered.

wirthjason 6y ago

“She charges up to $40 for lingerie pictures and videos or for content that implies nudity; $165 for topless photos and $200 for nude images and videos.” I don’t get it. Who has the income to drop hundreds of dollars on pictures like this?!?! The internet is filled with tons of free images and videos. I can’t see the point. I guess the “item” being sold isn’t just the image/video but rather the “interaction” and maybe personalization.

helipad 6y ago
I suppose you don't need income so much as a credit line.
Pfhreak 6y ago
My hypotheses: Some people want to pay creators, support specific individuals, or feel like they have a connection to someone in particular. If this is what someone's discretionary budget is allocated to, more power to them.
- chillwaves 6y ago
  This is a big part of it, at least in smaller communities. People want to show their gratitude. It's more relevant to the Twitch conversations. OF is basically all paid members where twitch, the ratio is probably 20:1 or worse, free to paid. The people who are paying are doing so because they want to, not because they have to. That's one big difference between Twitch and Onlyfans.
hippodou 6y ago
I'd pay a few hundred dollars for nudes of some women I know if they're happy to sell them with informed consent. Seeing someone you know naked is a lot more interesting than seeing a random person naked.
- hackinthebochs 6y ago
  This. It's strange how many people will rationalize that all nude images are interchangeable, so no one should pay for porn. It's so obviously not true for most people.

pstrateman 6y ago

High cost individual transactions sounds like elevated fraud risk. I bet this isn't even their decision. (Card processor is probably making them do this).

jonathanliu 6y ago
> I bet this isn't even their decision. (Card processor is probably making them do this). This is my thinking as well. Why else would OF willingly limit their own revenue? I doubt it's due to sincere concern for customer well-being.
- mcphage 6y ago
  > Why else would OF willingly limit their own revenue? Support for arbitrarily high transactions might be a net negative for their revenue, if the chargeback rate is high enough.
- mtnGoat 6y ago
  this wouldnt suprise me, i remember back when i was working with adult content, we couldnt sell subscriptions over a certain price, even if they were for years. i think this rule is still in place.
chard_slicks_ 6y ago
From what I understand Bella Thorne promised full nude images. When the image that users payed for wasn't full nude this upset many users. Since OnlyFans lacks a refund system many users issued charge backs in order to get their money back. The large number of chargebacks are what prompted OnlyFans to make the changes.
- gpm 6y ago
  For the Bella Thorne case in particular, it seems like it could be handled by onlyfans creating their own refund/fraud system. Returning money received fraudulently seems reasonable and unlikely to be challenged by content creators (whom you are presumably clawing it back from). A short "escrow" period to enable this seems unlikely to be challenged by content creators. The problematic case for chargebacks are probably "all the other ones" that aren't demonstrable fraud.

strikelaserclaw 6y ago

thirsty dudes are big business.

chillwaves 6y ago
This is the perfect TL:DR. Lots of talk here by confused techbros thinking about how they can cash in on this goldmine. They should read your comment.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  So how do you cater to thirsty dudes? If you can harness women, then you are rich. Simple as that. Notice how anything like this will always be male owned. It might seem like women are profiting in the short run, but ultimately they have nothing unique to offer and as supply increases they'll see diminished returns. Meanwhile the male owned business will only grow as demand won't shrink and they're creaming off all of it.
  - myaccount275 6y ago
    >So how do you cater to thirsty dudes? Self improvement and self help (real or just promised) are big ways to make money in this area. >Notice how anything like this will always be male owned. I don't think it makes a difference to the individual creators whether the middle-man profiting from this is male or female. The creators don't get any better outcome either way.
    - globular-toast 6y ago
      Yes. But it's all about dangling the carrot of promised sex in front of men, no matter how you dress it up. Self help is like selling a cookery book while porn is like selling a takeaway. Most people will go the route of instant gratification rather than a slow and difficult path.
      - myaccount275 6y ago

rvz 6y ago

An important reminder to all "content creators" on someone else's platform: What any monetisation platform can also give to them, they are more than able to take it away. Since it's their platform, they can do what they like. Best to just build your following there and move out and run your own show while you can.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago
With some of the numbers shown, I'm amazed they're still using a party that takes 20% of their innings instead of hiring a web company to set up their own site. I wonder if they're trapped in exclusivity contracts (and get thrown out if they fire up their own site), or just afraid of losing followers if they migrate away from onlyfans.
- mc32 6y ago
  Not being a fan I don’t know for sure, but I imagine having a platform where you have “choice” is probably a sticky feature of the site. Kinda like you’d rather shop Amazon than shop at a hundred different indiv stores.
- dmurray 6y ago
  OnlyFans is doing most of the sales and marketing work here, which is 99% of the value (nude pictures of hot "models" are a commodity). Charging only 20% seems like a steal.
  - hackinthebochs 6y ago
    Actually, onlyfans does almost zero marketing work. There is almost no discovery on the site. The only ones making any substantial money are those with a built-in audience from other platforms.
- vmchale 6y ago
  I mean, given the difficulty of payment processing for sex work...
- 6y ago

colesantiago 6y ago

Is there a reason why people would want to pay for this OnlyFans content? Genuinely interested.

throw_m239339 6y ago
> Is there a reason why people would want to pay for this OnlyFans content? Genuinely interested. The same reason people would want to pay for porn, I guess... the difference is that they get some kind of "exclusive" pornography. I see it has become a serious money making gig for some. Making $8000 is no small money for a lot of individuals. Definitely more than the average engineer salary in Europe.
- jrnichols 6y ago
  It has. I think that the content creators are going to wind up with a lot of competition, just like pornhub, and a lot of them simply won't make it while others will get into more extreme/taboo things and enjoy their lucrative niche.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    > while others will get into more extreme/taboo things and enjoy their lucrative niche. Like a pro dom teaching civil engineering classes?
    - jrnichols 6y ago
      That could indeed be a lucrative niche!
      - Gibbon1 6y ago
        I just remember a summer class at college. Some prat made the observation that everyone in the room was paying $40/hour for instruction and there were 25 of us. Hmm...
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago

notyourday 6y ago

What happened is that the actual head showed up and squeezed everyone else into a tail. Previous tail has been pushed out into a long tail. If you have had a chance to work with the companies in the content scene, you would recognize the pattern. A couple of top tier accounts (head) account for the lion's share of hot content and hence monetization, the next level of accounts (tail) - dozens to hundreds - has some hot content and hence monetization but at a fraction of the previous tier. Finally the rest of the accounts have nearly no hot content and hence no monetization (long tail). From an outside perspective based strictly on the content itself it is very difficult to determine the difference between tail and long tail. It is even unclear the difference between some of the long-tail and the head.

Ericson2314 6y ago

Not unlike the Spotify controversy where the middleman is happy to make it up in volume, even if the seller can't.

bena 6y ago

I honestly don't know what to think about the whole situation. In some ways, it feels like current content creators on OnlyFans are making the same complaints about Bella Thorne that certain communities were making about content creators on OnlyFans before. And there ain't no shame in their game. If people want to give OnlyFans creators money for any reason, as long as the money is theirs to give, etc, that's between them. What I think of the transaction is immaterial. It's about as useful as the closet full of Lego sets I have. And if people want to buy that content, why complain about the people providing it. No, it's not typically hard work. And let's all not pretend that it is. But. So what. Some people were just born wealthy. Some people just win the lottery. Or have some other windfall. Not all wealth is earned through hard work. That's just the way it is. I mean, look at all the people featured in the article. They're all attractive women. And more power to them if they've found a way they don't have to work hard to earn themselves some money. But it really feels like the current creators are complaining about Throne because she doesn't have to work as hard. Or that she's had automatic reach due to her celebrity status. That she doesn't even have to get nude to get this money. And that's the complaints made about the majority of creators by the people who cannot leverage the platform like they can. And it's not like the money sent to Thorne was going to affect the money sent to other creators. It's not like OnlyFans has $X a month to split between creators based on subscriptions. No, individuals choose to subscribe to specific creators. The people signed up to subscribe to Thorne weren't subscribing to OnlyFans because they like OnlyFans, they were signing up to OnlyFans to subscribe to Thorne. Take her away and they don't even sign up. And the cap limits are another thing in this debacle. They're trying to put the blame for that on Thorne, but really, that's a move that was going to come sooner or later. OnlyFans needs the subscribers more than the creators. The content is pretty fungible in all honesty. So OnlyFans will take measures to make sure the bleed is as slow as possible. On the other hand, I get why they're frustrated by all this. It can be difficult to watch someone waltz in and crush something you've been chipping away at for a while. It can be difficult to have the terms of a platform suddenly change under you and impact your income. Those are valid frustrations. I'm just not sure if it's a frustration that's actionable on their part. I think they just may have to suck this one up.

bobthepanda 6y ago
The alternative is also to stake out on their own and create their own platforms. OnlyFans is not quite the only game in town putting videos and posts behind a paywall.

un_montagnard 6y ago

I'm wondering if what actually happened is that Onlyfans leveraged the backlash around Bella Thorne to implement the limits they have been thinking about for a while, instead of implementing those as a reaction.

collyw 6y ago
Do they charge a flat fee or some kind of commission? If its a flat fee I guess it would be in their interest if its commission it wouldn't.
- un_montagnard 6y ago
  It's commission based I believe. But it could still be in their interest to mitigate chargebacks for example.
  - loktarogar 6y ago
    Chargebacks are HUGE in this field and all the mitigations you might find as part of your big payment processor don't apply because eg. Stripe don't allow any of this kind of thing on their platform.
    - CryptoBanker 6y ago
      That's funny because OnlyFans uses Stripe...
      - loktarogar 6y ago
        Ah, wasn't aware. One of my contract positions right now is in a sex worker field and a lot of the infrastructure and billing needs to be done themselves.
        chrischen 6y ago
        In some other HN thread it was explained that they use multiple CC processors, and only use Stripe on the non forbidden by Stripe stuff.

jmnicolas 6y ago

Time and time again we see the danger of letting an outside entity manage things for you. They make things easy for you but when you disagree with the way they run things you're often left sol. And the cost to exit the platform is much higher now.

cassalian 6y ago

The outrage at Bella Thorne seems misguided... After all, she did not change the policies, only fans did. Did her actions increase only fans timelines for these changes? Maybe. But at the end of the day, I don't think that justifies the outrage Bella Thorne is receiving over this. Am I missing some action that she took that should justify the outrage: for instance, Bella meeting with only fans to demand that the maximum allowed tip be reduced?

nickthegreek 6y ago
After my first review of this situation, I agreed with your assessment but apparently she has not been very pro sex-worker while building off of the services that they have grown. It's still very difficult to find good info on this situation, because its all twitter and insta posts without a good paper trail.
- cassalian 6y ago
  I too have been having issues with finding good info on this situation. Hopefully something will come to light that provides a little more explanation as to the anger directed at Bella. :shrug: I would not be surprised if this is just being blown up in the media because it involves sex workers which is sure to peak readers interest.
btbuildem 6y ago
I thought the issue was fraud: she charged for nudes but delivered non-nude photos.
- michaelt 6y ago
  That was certainly fraud and a bad thing, yes. But some reports say OnlyFans has been planning these changes for some time - and by rolling them out now, they can make Bella Thorne take the heat instead of taking it themselves.
jrnichols 6y ago
Looking at Twitter, a lot of them are angry with her because she has actually be able to have a dialogue with OnlyFans and they have been unable to get anything more than canned messages. The fallout from this is not unexpected, and neither is the Schadenfreude from it.

debacle 6y ago

Many people massively underestimate the effects of tech voyeurism. Even relatively tame fans can be frighteningly deep in delusions of having a connection with someone who they have little to no interaction with. I encourage anyone perplexed by how Bella supports herself when there is no scarcity on the Internet to pornography to check out Twitch's Just Chatting category. Find a thumb of an attractive woman and click into her stream. You will find many viewers who act as though they have a personal relationship with a streamer. People respond in chat as though they are having a conversation with the streamer. People donate (sometimes $10+) just to have their message read on stream. Most disconcerting, you will find a non-negligible amount of people who are watching the stream + insulting the streamer in chat. These are people taking time out of their day to participate in targeted, anonymous hate.

jonathanliu 6y ago
https://i.redd.it/jl8phukm3pf11.jpg https://i.redd.it/jl8phukm3pf11.jpg Probably the most famous example.
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  One can either look at this superficially and just laugh at the guy, or can read deeper into it and realize that maybe the Internet isn't as great as we thought (personally I think it's been a net negative for society and humanity as a whole -- unlocking revenue for businesses isn't a positive in my eyes). There's now a whole generation of (mainly) men under ~35 who have been disenfranchised and are almost completely disconnected from their own reality. The Internet is their only conduit.
  - debacle 6y ago
    The Internet is made of people.
    - wirthjason 6y ago
      “Hell is other people” -JP Sartre

biophysboy 6y ago

When somebody like Bella Thorne wants to "destigmatize" sex work, what exactly is he she talking about? Does she just want more people to respect the profession outright? Because I think there are a number of hurdles to this, even if we completely ignore traditional views on sex/relationships that a huge fraction of the country holds. Sex workers are luxury service workers. The job is transient and alienating. I feel like there are legitimate reasons to be wary of sex work, even if you don't subscribe to "all sex for all people must be in dedicated long term relationships".

srtjstjsj 6y ago
She's trying to get richer by being associated with sex without actually getting involved with it. She's "appropriating" sex work into a PG-13 version that further marginalized the people she claims to be supporting, while financially outcompeting them. IT work is transient and alienating too, but people do it because it pays the bills for their skills
GaryNumanVevo 6y ago
Sex workers are workers. But they don't have the same labor protections as any other blue collar or white collar job. The stigma from a cultural side is pretty small, especially given the millions of dollars flowing into online sex work. The stigma from sex work being in a legal grey zone affects those who rely on the income to support themselves and their family. Also I would be interested to know what other professions you consider "luxury service work" since I can't seem to find a proper definition readily.
- biophysboy 6y ago
  Definitely agree with you on the labor protections - they are gig workers at the end of the day. And they're probably even less likely to "organize" (whatever that means nowadays) than other gig workers. By luxury service work, I mean something where you perform services for people with much higher than average disposable income. Basically think of all the bottom rung jobs in the most expensive parts of the most expensive cities.
- 6y ago

btbuildem 6y ago

Strange response by OF, to cap the fees. They're actively limiting their own take (20% cut btw, kind of disgusting). I think the right thing to do would have been to refund those whom she defrauded with false advertising. If I understand the situation, she sold photos as one kind of content, but delivered something else in the end? If I bought a bag of potatoes but it turned out to be charcoal when I opened it, I'd bring it back to the store for a refund or exchange.

dvt 6y ago

For years, I was profoundly puzzled by people that are willing to give hundreds -- if not thousands -- of dollars to (mostly women) they'll never meet for what's basically freely available offline. I saw a very interesting mini-documentary on YouTube[0] not too long ago that kind of opened my eyes. The idea here is that places like Onlyfans, and to a lesser extent Twitch, monetize loneliness via parasocial relationships[1]. This is fundamentally different than being a fan of, say, an actress like Emma Stone, or an athlete like LeBron James. Viewers (the subject) actually believe they have a relationship with the object (be they a pro gamer or scantily-clad model). To most well-adjusted folks with a healthy social circle, this seems kind of nuts, but parasocial relationships have a long and sordid history -- starting with the invention of the "fireside chat" on radio. Loneliness is a powerful motivator and the psychology here is profoundly interesting. At the end of the day, I'd say places like Onlyfans end up being net negatives for both the models as well as the fans. It's a bit sick that the internet -- the very thing which was supposed to bring people together -- ends up cannibalizing its own. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djMojvschs0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djMojvschs0 [1] https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100305809 https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20...

valuearb 6y ago
Aren’t the women on OnlyFans monetizing it in a positive manner? Don’t base your world view on anecdotes from a carefully edited documentary. In reality almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy, so what’s wrong with fantasies?
- dvt 6y ago
  > Don’t base your world view on anecdotes from a carefully edited documentary. In reality almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy, so what’s wrong with fantasies? I'm not sure what you mean. The documentary seemed fairly middle-of-the-road and interviewed both fans as well as models. It's pretty clear that parasocial relationships aren't healthy (whether it's with a game show host or an Onlyfans model), so I would definitely push back against "almost all the customers know it’s a fantasy."

renewiltord 6y ago

Is it primarily a biological or cultural phenomenon that most creators of this content are women and most consumers of the content are men? Honestly, I don't know if that's true, but from what little this intersects with my news feed it appears to be true.

kvgr 6y ago
Most woman can get attention at some appropriate level. Even if not coolest, prettiest, smartest. A lot of man can't. And the way to get together to be attractive is sometimes hard. Better to pay for only fans than to shoot up some place...
- actuator 6y ago
  But is paid attention worth it, wouldn't it end up making you feel hollow once that interaction is over and you realize how made up the whole thing was.
  - chongli 6y ago
    If you can get paid attention then you can get free attention. I would imagine a lot of these female performers are already in relationships. They just work very hard to conceal their relationships online in order to preserve the illusion for their fans.
    - actuator 6y ago
      I was talking about the males who are paying, not the female performers. They definitely should be able to get attention, and for them from an economic opportunity perspective this makes complete sense.
      - chongli 6y ago
        Oh in that case I don't think they realize how hollow it is, at least not at first. The top performers (on Twitch, anyway, I have never visited OnlyFans) work very hard to keep their top donors happy. They thank them profusely, grant them moderator status, single out their chat messages to read and respond to on stream, and likely even chat with them in private messages after the stream. Anything to maintain the illusion that this is a real relationship rather than a transactional one. This is why OnlyFans was created in the first place: a site outside of the rules of Twitch terms of service that lets performers take things "to the next level" with their top donors. It's like the VIP room in a strip club. Edit to add more thoughts: I think strip clubs are the right analogy for how to evaluate these channels (the "just chatting" ones and any of the gaming ones that prominently feature very attractive performers). They are fundamentally about creating and maintaining an illusion with the (usually male viewers). Unfortunately, this can be very dangerous. It's pretty common knowledge that strippers are much more likely to suffer violence than the average woman. They may be safer than street-walking prostitutes, but nowhere near as safe as a woman in a white-collar job. How safe are these streamers in the long run? The distance and pseudonymity provided by the internet may afford a level of safety, compared to the closeness of a strip club. On the other hand, streamers can have several orders of magnitude more viewers than even the largest of strip clubs. A large viewer count can magnify the risk that one disillusioned fan decides to "go rogue" and stalk the streamer, dox her, and attack her in person. I would not be surprised if we see a case of serious violence (or murder) against a top streamer within a few years.

mrkramer 6y ago

I wonder why Instagram is not doing this; free tier are your profile photos premium are paid ones. But there should be a line between non adult and adult, YouTube chose not to host porn and I think they did the right thing.

antihero 6y ago
Because AFAIK Instagram and Facebook's apps rely on them not being adult platforms due to the App Store and Play Store guidelines.
- mrkramer 6y ago
  I forgot adult apps are banned on App Store and Play Store, so adult apps can only run on Android devices by providing .apk file to users while being completely banned on iOS?! Weird situation for adult entrepreneurs.
- paxys 6y ago
  Even outside of app stores, adult content in general is a massive hole that no large company wants to touch. There's a ton of overhead due to scams/chargebacks, harm to the brand, content moderation and lots more.
jrnichols 6y ago
That's what many use Instagram for now, though, just a vehicle to their OnlyFans account. Unfortunately, the OnlyFans "creators" have also flocked to reddit and spam it relentlessly. So bad that quite a few subreddits have had to ban "sellers" who were drowning out the other users.

palindrome818 6y ago

There are 2 very different reasons for using OnlyFans. 1. Sex workers are using it to offer a luxury service (The Girlfriend Experience) to clients, virtually. It's taking something that used to be only available to the very wealthy and making it scalable. 2. Celebrities like Bella Thorne, Tana Mongeau and Cardi B are using it as a means of publicity, similar to the sex tape strategy used by Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton. (There's a good doc about this on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsK_6VSmlMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsK_6VSmlMI)

afiori 6y ago
I though that for Kim Kardashian it was about riding the wave of a fake sex tape and for Paris Hilton an actual leak she didn't profit from (similarly to Jennifer Lawrence)
- palindrome818 6y ago
  Everyone claims that it was leaked, but both of the sex tapes were timed to come out during the first season of Keeping up with the Kardashians and the first season of The Simple Life. Life has a lot of coincidences, but the real question is- were they making lemonade from lemons OR is it artificial lemon juice, something that looks like lemons but isn't?

wizu 6y ago

When I was younger, I supported full legalisation of sex work because I thought that to disallow it would be to remove the agency of sex workers who had chosen that path as their profession. Then I got older and read accounts of sex workers trafficked to European countries where prostitution is legal I realised that some (but not all) sex workers are actually participating in "legal" transactions under duress. In my mind that invalidates the necessary consent required when the activity involves sex work of some kind, making it unethical from the buyer to acquire such a service despite it being legal locally. While trafficking is of course still illegal, I am unclear about the laws protecting trafficking victims from their "buyers" in non-consenting transactions. Since it is practically impossible to confirm if a given sex worker is participating under duress or not, especially when it occurs "remotely" as in this OnlyFans situation, I would say it is always unethical to purchase such services. In addition, what I would consider "under duress" is fairly broad, not only under threat of violence from traffickers, but also including economic duress where an individual feels that it is the only way to earn an income to put food on the table. In this vein, I would consider sex tourism to poorer countries a form of exploitation and thus unethical, even though one could argue the individuals from the poorer countries selling such services do so "willingly". This article writes that one of these women feels that she must engage in sex work through OnlyFans because it is "the only way she can support her family...". It leaves a bad taste as I would not consider that she is participating in the transaction without duress, and thus actually consenting in the transaction. Would you be okay with it if you knew that the woman you were buying lingerie pictures "had" to do it? How would that not be a form of exploitation? However, one can extend this argument to any type of work. "She says her _____ work is the only way she can support her family...", replace with an arbitrary line of work and activity (woodcutting/marketing/basketweaving). Is there any thing that makes sex work special (apart from some puritanical opinion which are not actually applicable), that would make such a transaction inherently more unethical than say being forced to work at McDonalds because it's the only way to make ends meet? Why would the latter more "ethical" than the former, when an individual is still "forced" to sell their labor to survive, what ever form that labor is?

stouset 6y ago
> Since it is practically impossible to confirm if a given sex worker is participating under duress or not, especially when it occurs "remotely" as in this OnlyFans situation, I would say it is always unethical to purchase such services. Applying this kind of blanket rule leads to all sorts of ridiculous conclusions. Can you verify that the people assembling the very device you wrote this post on aren't under similar amounts of duress as you clutch your pearls over in this comment?

ShaniceWilliams 6y ago

Big Yikes. B should give all that money she earned right back to the sex workers and only fans people she ripped off.

rasz 6y ago

My takeaway: Bella Thorne scammed tens of thousands of people, OnlyFans didnt kick her off the platform, WTF?

theshrike79 6y ago
You don't kick the golden goose. It's the same reason why the biggest Twitch stars can do pretty much anything on stream and not get banned, while normies get the banhammer immediately for lesser offences.
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  it seems onlyfans has a different model, and they are profitable and don't need celebs. the story reads like Bella needed onlyfans, not vice versa
  - abiogenesis 6y ago
    I don't think so. I haven't heard of onlyfans until today, but it made into news because of a celebrity. Now more people have heard of them. Now I hadn't heard of Bella Thorne either, but that's a different story.
    - cblconfederate 6y ago
      considering that onlyfans and the like cater to porn , i doubt the publicity will much affect their bottom line if anything, the publicity and ensuing scrutiny these sites get usually leads to them getting shut down
    - biztos 6y ago
      In certain parts of the Internet, OnlyFans has been a huge deal for a long time, and most definitely not because of what you'd call "celebrities" anywhere outside those parts. It's also the primary source of income for a decent number of people. I've never been on Twitch and am only vaguely aware that anything like a celebrity exists in the video-gaming world. Couldn't name one to save my life. (And yes I know Twitch isn't just about games.) Edit: I have nothing against Twitch, just pointing out that it's easy to think something isn't well-known when it actually is, just not to people like you (or me).

ouid 6y ago

And here I though that the outrage was going to be over onlyfans charging 20%!

_pmf_ 6y ago

"Content"

lihaciudaniel 6y ago

SIMP culture existed way before this trend of onlyfans, you would know rhat

LandR 6y ago

> Ms Corbridge offers services ranging from $7-$25 "personalised penis ratings" What on earth! I guess I'm so out of touch with what some people are after on the internet.

ornornor 6y ago
Can you imagine getting a “F” for a penis rating you requested and paid for under the assumption that she’d be giving complacent ratings only?

bobwernstein 6y ago

Anyone know of any aggregate accounts? could be good business.