47 ms·

Fire up the throwaway! Not 100% related to the article, but directly related. I worked as developer for a product in the same niche ("democratizing adult cont

Fire up the throwaway! Not 100% related to the article, but directly related. I worked as developer for a product in the same niche ("democratizing adult content"). I spent almost 2 years working on the frontend, devops, and building out the analytics engine (all pre-covid). Anyway, on to the comment at hand. We had a small number of users compared to OnlyFans (when I left, there were about 20K active content creators). The average monthly payment was $5000 (skewed massively by the top 5%). We had phone support for our larger creator. One very common request was to instantly delete all data and stop processing future orders. Usually, the requester was in a pretty agitated/distraught state (I'd occasionally get escalated calls to "confirm" that all data would be deleted ASAP and no copies would be kept). I spoke to a few of our creators and most would be desperate to scrub all of their content form the internet because: a) A parent/relative found out. b) A fellow employee at their 9-5 stumbled on their account. c) A 'fan' went nuclear and was waging all out digital war. One creator had a former subscriber sending data dumps to all their Facebook and Instagram friends (they also spammed every public email address at their 'normal' workplace, which was a local government). We would occasionally get demanding letters requesting the removal of content from third party sites (Pornhub, Reddit, etc). The creators would somehow be surprised when they realised we couldn't remove content from other websites. The experience was very depressing.

vlunkr 5y ago
This summarizes my opinion on OF. I'm not sure if it's unethical or predatory, but I'm quite sure that most people posting content there are going to regret it very soon.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- standardUser 5y ago
  Why are you "quite sure"? What are the consequences of having naked photos of yourself out there in the world that would cause most people to regret it?
  - vlunkr 5y ago
    See the parent comment for multiple examples. Combine that with the fact that most of them will not make a significant amount of money. And even if they hit that lottery, it's probably only going to pay out while they're still young.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pcbro141 5y ago
Not surprised. I would just assume eventually some sexually frustrated person would try to doxx you at some point. I think there are even organized groups dedicated to doing just that. Sexually frustrated/not getting laid + seeing women making money off their sexuality ('unfair') makes some of these people incredibly angry.
- jollybean 5y ago
  This is a neat idea, but hugely speculative. But also possibly be besides the point: the internet doesn't keep secrets. A choice to put content out there in public form, is de-facto a choice to make it available to anyone. Whether they paid the $10 or not. That's a reality that has to be contended with wherever someone sits on the fence about the morality of it all.
  - pcbro141 5y ago
    Not speculating, the group I'm referring to openly stated they thought it was unfair how much power women wield in the sexual marketplace and how they can be allowed to make money off their sex appeal. I totally agree the content creators should assume the content will remain public forever and they will be doxxed at some point.
    - Semaphor 5y ago
      For anyone who wants proof, you only need to watch the twitch videos of some big gaming streamers. Trainwrecks is a perfect example of what pcbro141 just described. Kotaku has an article about the incidence [0]. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/16/16654800/twitch-gaming-trainwrecks-banned-female-streamers-rant-moderation https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/16/16654800/twitch-gaming-t...
- pseudo0 5y ago
  The problem is that those people are the "whales" for these content creators. Normal people with healthy real-world relationships don't spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on online parasocial porn addictions. It's like someone selling crack and complaining about how they have to deal with crack addicts.
ayngg 5y ago
I think in general there are some pretty big costs that aren't fully understood to doing sex work, even outside of the social stigma of being found out by your friends and family, there are mental health costs that are often not talked about. A lot of sex workers overtly reinforce social behaviors towards women (sexualization and objectification among other things) in order to appeal to men, which hurts them in the long run. Social media in all forms grooms young naive women into feeling these types of careers are lucrative (which they can be) and even empowering, but I almost see it as drug dealing, with the drug being intimacy and attention, and by nature it is a transaction where the dealer always uses their own supply. I feel like these dangerous aspects of sex work are often ignored in the current zeitgeist of de-stigmatizing, or of rebranding sex work in western society. While things like onlyfans have helped with issues of exploitation, it has really changed the game into one that is not well understood yet.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  All valid points. I guess it’s difficult to simultaneously de-stigmatize and urge caution. Instead what happens is we encourage new people to try it, and then some of the people who have tried it share their experiences with the community. That’s how people end up learning about problems with it. Since it is an experimental phase there are more failures (went poorly for some folks). We might say the same thing happens with bad crypto schemes. Young people get excited and they can lose a lot of money. Though the stakes are potentially higher when you lose your reputation.
  - sebmellen 5y ago
    And then the cycle of stigmatization begins again… Almost as if there is a purpose to it. Is stigmatization always an objectively bad thing? I suppose it depends on your frame of reference. I don’t think any person should be stigmatized for what they do, but certain activities may well deserve it. I suppose that’s also a recurrent theme in the New Testament. One thing I think ought to be stigmatized more is video game usage. I know many people (mostly men) my age (late adolescence) whose lives have been/were destroyed by chronic video game addiction. Similar with porn and “sex-work adjacent” things (on the consumer side).
somedude895 5y ago
> The average monthly payment was $5000 (skewed massively by the top 5%). I used to work in the direct carrier billing department of a large telco and I'm still amazed by the phenomenon of whales. We'd get 98% of people spending 20 bucks on Spotify and the odd app here and there, and then there were people who would consistently spend 15k+ on Candy Crush (and pay their bills). Not the same level as what you're talking about but I couldn't help but wonder about the millionaire sitting on their couch playing terrible mobile games all day.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  Why you should always report both mean and median!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - google234123 5y ago
    Even if there is a large skew, the mean and median will be often still be pretty close together. Especially with a large sample size.
    - viraptor 5y ago
      That's not how it works... The larger the skew, the farther away they are. If your median goes up significantly because of whales, that means they're not really "whales" as usually understood.
    - KarlKode 5y ago
      If you have 90 creators earning 5$ / month and 10 creators earning 50k$ / month, they earn 5,4k$ / month on average while the median is 5$ / month. On my books this is not close together.
    - ramraj07 5y ago
      If it’s somewhat Gaussian or normal sure. But if it’s a different distribution then this isn’t true at all.
simonebrunozzi 5y ago
> there were about 20K active content creators). The average monthly payment was $5000 20k times $5,000 = $100M/month. Still quite impressive.
- deaddodo 5y ago
  I'm sure their cut was somewhere in the 10-15%. There's no way there was an OnlyFans competitor a few years ago with a 1.2B USD revenue stream and it went without notice (or purchase). OnlyFans just broke a 2B USD GMV after the COVID surge; and, at their 20% cut, that's a $400M per annum revenue stream.
  - throwmeawaydddy 5y ago
    Yeah, you're close on the cut (varied from 12.5% to 25% depending on purchase types). The revenue was nowhere near 1.2B. (I wrote the below in another comment, but it's relevant to this comment): Both of the claims in my original comment are correct as stated: * Roughly 20K active creators (VAL_A). * An average monthly payout to creators of $5K (VAL_B). HOWEVER, that does not mean that VAL_A * VAL_B = total monthly payout. The below details are relevant: 1. Not all active creators made money. 2. There was a payout minimum (well, a free payout minimum, which the majority of users waited to reach).
- quenix 5y ago
  … heavily skewed by the top 5%. So the number is likely way, way lower than $100M (perhaps $8-10M?)
  - jtolmar 5y ago
    It's an average, so the skew doesn't matter for this. Average = sum / count. Multiply both sides by count. Sum = count * average.
    - quenix 5y ago
      Neat! This does seem algebraically coherent. Unfortunately, it just doesn't make intuitive sense to my lizard brain. Cool trick anyway, thanks for clearing it up!
Haga 5y ago
For many uneducated woman their sexuality is their biggest bargaining chip for a good life. They Band together in contract-cults and terrorize free actors to prevent the runaway value drop of sexual content.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
It’s pretty sad that many people (lets face It mainly women) who make themselves visible on the internet and/or express an unpopular opinion on the face abuse - and I guess porn is no different, but it seems quite naive to assume that you can stay anonymous on onlyfans like sites.
oceanghost 5y ago
Very interesting. There are so many things Id like to say. c) Was this done as blackmail? There is a somewhat common dating site scam where someone gets you to friend them on FB, and then to sext with them-- then they threaten to send the material to your FB friends. I'd imagine OF girls would almost be a captive audience for this. --- While I find OF personally distasteful, I realize that I paid for sex the old fashioned way, "With a wedding ring, a house, a child and half the stuff when you leave." I can't help but see this as an acceleration of that. I know plenty of people in miserable marriages. Women have always traded beauty for money. Just before it was through marriage. --- and lastly... I think we're ignoring the elephant in the room. I'd wager that a much higher percentage than average of OF girls have likely been abuse victims at some point in their lives. There's this paradoxical thing where, yes, they're adults they have every right to sell pictures, but often what leads them to this is... abuse, which makes the whole thing very murky. Source? Anecdotal-- having dated a cam girl, and my SO works with girls who have been abused and it's just depressing. I have very causal interactions with this girls, but, they'll either be afraid of you because you're a man, or recklessly flirt because you're a man, or in the case of neglect/absentee fathers-- cast you in the role of the male role-model they need. I have about 6 girls who call me "dad." :-/ One girl here actually gave someone a blowjob for a Lunchables snack pack (worth $2.99).
- throwmeawaydddy 5y ago
  > c) Was this done as blackmail? There is a somewhat common dating site scam where someone gets you to friend them on FB, and then to sext with them-- then they threaten to send the material to your FB friends. I'd imagine OF girls would almost be a captive audience for this. No, it wasn't blackmail. The creator never received any messages from the fan that went nuclear (they only know it was a 'fan' since they had the entire catalogue of pay-per-access content and some had very few purchases). It seems they just woke up one day and said 'fuck it, time to wreck a life'. They persisted for a few months. From memory, they started with the creators LinkedIn account and then moved to Facebook -> Instagram -> mass emailing the creators 9-5 company. The creator deleted most online accounts and started using an alias (which sadly the ex-fan also discovered and continued spamming). > and lastly... I think we're ignoring the elephant in the room. Yeah, I think you're on the money with your core point. Very few of the creators I interacted with directly seemed to be thriving in other parts of life sadly.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
I feel like this is why there's relatively little competition on social networks and similar user-generated content platforms; moderation and customer support is heavily underestimated. From day one you need to have a full staff making sure no illegal or undesirable content is uploaded. I'm sure there's third party companies that can help / do it for you, but it's still a big problem to solve regardless.
akudha 5y ago
I wonder if C is an unsolvable problem. There is some progress being made (revenge porn laws for example), but for the most part, law lags behind. Even if we had robust laws, I doubt law enforcement has the interest and resources to go after such "fans". If resources are stretched, they're gonna pick a murder case to solve than a digital stalker case. It would be more complicated if this so called fan happens to live in another country
- stevenicr 5y ago
  I have seen this type of thing happen several times - and it often crosses international jurisdictions which makes it hard and slow. I also believe there will/are people who will take over this kind of thing for a fee - like rather than running the low orbit pinger to cause damage which could be traced to you, you can pay someone in a another country 20 bucks to do it for you - claim the old, 'my phone was hacked' sucks for you game - hard to prove. would be nice for facebook to detect when revenge pics are being shared to someone's fam/friends/work colleagues and stop the messages from going through / being seen. But that's not going to stop emails being sent to employers / other places and such. Having strong laws that are known may be a deterrent for some and that's great - but I don't think it's solvable - this kind of thing has been posted on hackforums/ewhoring scams / blackmail how-tos for a long time. And there will always be some crime group that'll send some emails for the cost of a subway card - and they'll update instructions for how to zip up files and bypass dns blocks and such to get the data they need to complete the task. digital literacy about sharing pics with people who say they like you that later turn out not be the person you thought they were - things like that could help. Teaching new 'performers' and others who want to share nudes for money that there will always be possibility that suck files are easily shared and can escape to others would be good too. if you don't want others to see it or it to be shown in a court in public don't send it - internet, sms, etc.
knodi 5y ago
I’m not hating on these women, I understand they’re trying to make a living, and there is nothing wrong with what they’re doing. What you described is the danger of getting into any kind business without fully understanding the risk, market, and potential outcomes.
mrweasel 5y ago
> A 'fan' went nuclear and was waging all out digital war. If I where to change profession it is things like this that would push me towards psychology. I am deeply fascinated by actions of, well, assholes. How are they broken and why?
- m12k 5y ago
  I see it the other way around: Not being an asshole isn't the default, it's something you need to learn, and not everyone does. I actually have a sneaking suspicion that most people don't learn it, but just learn to fake it while others are watching.
  - XCSme 5y ago
    I think that most animals are non-assholes by default, doing mostly what it takes to survive and live as peacefully as possible.
    - NateEag 5y ago
      Go read about young male dolphins' sexual habits. And what mother lions in packs do to cubs other than their own. There are more examples than just those two.
dfxm12 5y ago
The creators would somehow be surprised when they realised we couldn't remove content from other websites. Don't you have skin in this, too? I would expect that you would want to protect your content in much the same way a film studio protects their content when it pops up on 3rd party sites. I don't know if you're being obtuse with your wording here, but whether or not your customers realized that you can't physically remove content from others sites directly is beside the point when there are well known legal options.
- jszymborski 5y ago
  If I'm totally honest, I never thought of it this way, but humour me this: if OF and the like are considered distributors in the traditional sense of the entertainment world, would they typically be responsible for engaging in legal disputes over unauthorized distribution? My feeble understanding of the law is that it would be more appropriate for copyright holders to sue in instances of illegal distribution. I understand why this isn't an option for most people (they don't have the resources a studio does), but I'm just trying to trace back who has the right to press for charges.
  - dfxm12 5y ago
    If a company gets revenue from exclusive content, they should do whatever it takes to make sure that content is exclusive. If a company gets revenue from content creators, they should do what it takes to attract and retain content creators. Whether or not the company owns the copyright in this case, based on these premises, whether that the company has the right to do it themselves, or on behalf of their content creators when they've been asked for this help, it's in the company's best interest to do it.
    - Dracophoenix 5y ago
      If we're discussing this from a "best interest" standpoint, then the studio is no longer obtaining revenue if it's being asked to delete all the content of a specific person on its own sites and thus any obligations of keeping content out of reach from other service providers cease. It's not in the studio's best interests to spend money litigating or issuing DMCA notices on behalf of a former associate.
neonbones 5y ago
I can tell something from a POV of a webcam. My ex-girlfriend was a webcam model on the biggest website (chatur), and she was successful. It was even before the rising and growth of OF, somewhere around 2017. She was happy with her job, and as I know, she is still satisfied with the money she gets from it. Usually, it's around $500-1000 and even $2-3k for one day of work. It's happened because we live in a poor country where it's hard to find a job even with a degree, so you need to survive somehow. And we were younger and more naive. Anyway, the thing is that she was part of the community of webcam models, and most of them working 4-8 hours a day and got around $300-500 in a week. Most of the money goes to 5% of models that appear on the first page. It's a super competitive job, and your only way is to find regular customers who will visit all your streams to tip and talk about random things. There was an old dude who takes private and talked about his daughter and family issues. He was lonely and just want to speak anonymously to someone. But there are also real creeps, one of them even somehow found out where we live and our city and travel here (to Eastern Europe from Korea) to report my ex to the police. He demands that she must have sex with him if she wants that to stop. He was nice to her, and everything was fine, but one day she rejects his request (some crazy fetish things), and he goes mad, and all that happened. You're right. The most significant fans are also the ones who go apeshit when something goes wrong for them, and it's scary to think about people like that and what they can do to break someone's life.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  Our culture is sick. I don't judge you or your ex-girlfriend for doing it but the whole webcam business shouldn't be a thing. Governments should do more to help socially awkward people make real connections with others outside the internet. Instead people sit at home more and more and then lonely men pay to look at streams of women masturbating. If you got someone to time travel from 100 years ago they'd probably think we've gone full retard.
  - mkw2000 5y ago
    You think the government should stop people from jacking off?
standardUser 5y ago
"C" is a tough one and genuinely frightening. Not just the digital assault like you describe, but the danger of physical assault or other crimes. But "A" and "B" are becoming less of a concern for a lot of people thanks to rapidly changing attitudes towards sex work. Most people I know who do some kind of sex work either aren't concerned about a family member of employer finding out, or their family members and employer already know about their work. I hope we can all do our part to continue pushing our society towards being more accepting and less damning of sexuality (market-oriented or otherwise).
throwaway6945 5y ago
What's striking to me is that the negative consequences of sex work are not at all the sex work itself, but the stigma and trauma inflicted on sex workers by other people who ought to mind their own business, but clearly won't and from abuse by mentally ill mostly male sorts taking out their frustrations upon them in increasingly horrible ways. I don't have a solution here. But I also agree that there are plenty of other horrible jobs in the world and it's also striking that the same people who lose their minds over sex work would not raise a peep over those other professions that have little or nothing to do with sex. Judge not lest ye be judged? Yeah right.
tarkin2 5y ago
So do your users assume their fans won’t make copies, somehow, of the content and share it?
chansiky 5y ago
We could also just all stop being prudes about nudity. I can't name a single other species that would shame because one of them is naked.

vlunkr 5y ago

This summarizes my opinion on OF. I'm not sure if it's unethical or predatory, but I'm quite sure that most people posting content there are going to regret it very soon.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
standardUser 5y ago
Why are you "quite sure"? What are the consequences of having naked photos of yourself out there in the world that would cause most people to regret it?
- vlunkr 5y ago
  See the parent comment for multiple examples. Combine that with the fact that most of them will not make a significant amount of money. And even if they hit that lottery, it's probably only going to pay out while they're still young.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pcbro141 5y ago

Not surprised. I would just assume eventually some sexually frustrated person would try to doxx you at some point. I think there are even organized groups dedicated to doing just that. Sexually frustrated/not getting laid + seeing women making money off their sexuality ('unfair') makes some of these people incredibly angry.

jollybean 5y ago
This is a neat idea, but hugely speculative. But also possibly be besides the point: the internet doesn't keep secrets. A choice to put content out there in public form, is de-facto a choice to make it available to anyone. Whether they paid the $10 or not. That's a reality that has to be contended with wherever someone sits on the fence about the morality of it all.
- pcbro141 5y ago
  Not speculating, the group I'm referring to openly stated they thought it was unfair how much power women wield in the sexual marketplace and how they can be allowed to make money off their sex appeal. I totally agree the content creators should assume the content will remain public forever and they will be doxxed at some point.
  - Semaphor 5y ago
    For anyone who wants proof, you only need to watch the twitch videos of some big gaming streamers. Trainwrecks is a perfect example of what pcbro141 just described. Kotaku has an article about the incidence [0]. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/16/16654800/twitch-gaming-trainwrecks-banned-female-streamers-rant-moderation https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/16/16654800/twitch-gaming-t...
pseudo0 5y ago
The problem is that those people are the "whales" for these content creators. Normal people with healthy real-world relationships don't spend hundreds or thousands of dollars a month on online parasocial porn addictions. It's like someone selling crack and complaining about how they have to deal with crack addicts.

ayngg 5y ago

I think in general there are some pretty big costs that aren't fully understood to doing sex work, even outside of the social stigma of being found out by your friends and family, there are mental health costs that are often not talked about. A lot of sex workers overtly reinforce social behaviors towards women (sexualization and objectification among other things) in order to appeal to men, which hurts them in the long run. Social media in all forms grooms young naive women into feeling these types of careers are lucrative (which they can be) and even empowering, but I almost see it as drug dealing, with the drug being intimacy and attention, and by nature it is a transaction where the dealer always uses their own supply. I feel like these dangerous aspects of sex work are often ignored in the current zeitgeist of de-stigmatizing, or of rebranding sex work in western society. While things like onlyfans have helped with issues of exploitation, it has really changed the game into one that is not well understood yet.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
All valid points. I guess it’s difficult to simultaneously de-stigmatize and urge caution. Instead what happens is we encourage new people to try it, and then some of the people who have tried it share their experiences with the community. That’s how people end up learning about problems with it. Since it is an experimental phase there are more failures (went poorly for some folks). We might say the same thing happens with bad crypto schemes. Young people get excited and they can lose a lot of money. Though the stakes are potentially higher when you lose your reputation.
- sebmellen 5y ago
  And then the cycle of stigmatization begins again… Almost as if there is a purpose to it. Is stigmatization always an objectively bad thing? I suppose it depends on your frame of reference. I don’t think any person should be stigmatized for what they do, but certain activities may well deserve it. I suppose that’s also a recurrent theme in the New Testament. One thing I think ought to be stigmatized more is video game usage. I know many people (mostly men) my age (late adolescence) whose lives have been/were destroyed by chronic video game addiction. Similar with porn and “sex-work adjacent” things (on the consumer side).

somedude895 5y ago

> The average monthly payment was $5000 (skewed massively by the top 5%). I used to work in the direct carrier billing department of a large telco and I'm still amazed by the phenomenon of whales. We'd get 98% of people spending 20 bucks on Spotify and the odd app here and there, and then there were people who would consistently spend 15k+ on Candy Crush (and pay their bills). Not the same level as what you're talking about but I couldn't help but wonder about the millionaire sitting on their couch playing terrible mobile games all day.

ramraj07 5y ago
Why you should always report both mean and median!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- google234123 5y ago
  Even if there is a large skew, the mean and median will be often still be pretty close together. Especially with a large sample size.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    That's not how it works... The larger the skew, the farther away they are. If your median goes up significantly because of whales, that means they're not really "whales" as usually understood.
  - KarlKode 5y ago
    If you have 90 creators earning 5$ / month and 10 creators earning 50k$ / month, they earn 5,4k$ / month on average while the median is 5$ / month. On my books this is not close together.
  - ramraj07 5y ago
    If it’s somewhat Gaussian or normal sure. But if it’s a different distribution then this isn’t true at all.

simonebrunozzi 5y ago

> there were about 20K active content creators). The average monthly payment was $5000 20k times $5,000 = $100M/month. Still quite impressive.

deaddodo 5y ago
I'm sure their cut was somewhere in the 10-15%. There's no way there was an OnlyFans competitor a few years ago with a 1.2B USD revenue stream and it went without notice (or purchase). OnlyFans just broke a 2B USD GMV after the COVID surge; and, at their 20% cut, that's a $400M per annum revenue stream.
- throwmeawaydddy 5y ago
  Yeah, you're close on the cut (varied from 12.5% to 25% depending on purchase types). The revenue was nowhere near 1.2B. (I wrote the below in another comment, but it's relevant to this comment): Both of the claims in my original comment are correct as stated: * Roughly 20K active creators (VAL_A). * An average monthly payout to creators of $5K (VAL_B). HOWEVER, that does not mean that VAL_A * VAL_B = total monthly payout. The below details are relevant: 1. Not all active creators made money. 2. There was a payout minimum (well, a free payout minimum, which the majority of users waited to reach).
quenix 5y ago
… heavily skewed by the top 5%. So the number is likely way, way lower than $100M (perhaps $8-10M?)
- jtolmar 5y ago
  It's an average, so the skew doesn't matter for this. Average = sum / count. Multiply both sides by count. Sum = count * average.
  - quenix 5y ago
    Neat! This does seem algebraically coherent. Unfortunately, it just doesn't make intuitive sense to my lizard brain. Cool trick anyway, thanks for clearing it up!

Haga 5y ago

For many uneducated woman their sexuality is their biggest bargaining chip for a good life. They Band together in contract-cults and terrorize free actors to prevent the runaway value drop of sexual content.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

It’s pretty sad that many people (lets face It mainly women) who make themselves visible on the internet and/or express an unpopular opinion on the face abuse - and I guess porn is no different, but it seems quite naive to assume that you can stay anonymous on onlyfans like sites.

oceanghost 5y ago

Very interesting. There are so many things Id like to say. c) Was this done as blackmail? There is a somewhat common dating site scam where someone gets you to friend them on FB, and then to sext with them-- then they threaten to send the material to your FB friends. I'd imagine OF girls would almost be a captive audience for this. --- While I find OF personally distasteful, I realize that I paid for sex the old fashioned way, "With a wedding ring, a house, a child and half the stuff when you leave." I can't help but see this as an acceleration of that. I know plenty of people in miserable marriages. Women have always traded beauty for money. Just before it was through marriage. --- and lastly... I think we're ignoring the elephant in the room. I'd wager that a much higher percentage than average of OF girls have likely been abuse victims at some point in their lives. There's this paradoxical thing where, yes, they're adults they have every right to sell pictures, but often what leads them to this is... abuse, which makes the whole thing very murky. Source? Anecdotal-- having dated a cam girl, and my SO works with girls who have been abused and it's just depressing. I have very causal interactions with this girls, but, they'll either be afraid of you because you're a man, or recklessly flirt because you're a man, or in the case of neglect/absentee fathers-- cast you in the role of the male role-model they need. I have about 6 girls who call me "dad." :-/ One girl here actually gave someone a blowjob for a Lunchables snack pack (worth $2.99).

throwmeawaydddy 5y ago
> c) Was this done as blackmail? There is a somewhat common dating site scam where someone gets you to friend them on FB, and then to sext with them-- then they threaten to send the material to your FB friends. I'd imagine OF girls would almost be a captive audience for this. No, it wasn't blackmail. The creator never received any messages from the fan that went nuclear (they only know it was a 'fan' since they had the entire catalogue of pay-per-access content and some had very few purchases). It seems they just woke up one day and said 'fuck it, time to wreck a life'. They persisted for a few months. From memory, they started with the creators LinkedIn account and then moved to Facebook -> Instagram -> mass emailing the creators 9-5 company. The creator deleted most online accounts and started using an alias (which sadly the ex-fan also discovered and continued spamming). > and lastly... I think we're ignoring the elephant in the room. Yeah, I think you're on the money with your core point. Very few of the creators I interacted with directly seemed to be thriving in other parts of life sadly.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

I feel like this is why there's relatively little competition on social networks and similar user-generated content platforms; moderation and customer support is heavily underestimated. From day one you need to have a full staff making sure no illegal or undesirable content is uploaded. I'm sure there's third party companies that can help / do it for you, but it's still a big problem to solve regardless.

akudha 5y ago

I wonder if C is an unsolvable problem. There is some progress being made (revenge porn laws for example), but for the most part, law lags behind. Even if we had robust laws, I doubt law enforcement has the interest and resources to go after such "fans". If resources are stretched, they're gonna pick a murder case to solve than a digital stalker case. It would be more complicated if this so called fan happens to live in another country

stevenicr 5y ago
I have seen this type of thing happen several times - and it often crosses international jurisdictions which makes it hard and slow. I also believe there will/are people who will take over this kind of thing for a fee - like rather than running the low orbit pinger to cause damage which could be traced to you, you can pay someone in a another country 20 bucks to do it for you - claim the old, 'my phone was hacked' sucks for you game - hard to prove. would be nice for facebook to detect when revenge pics are being shared to someone's fam/friends/work colleagues and stop the messages from going through / being seen. But that's not going to stop emails being sent to employers / other places and such. Having strong laws that are known may be a deterrent for some and that's great - but I don't think it's solvable - this kind of thing has been posted on hackforums/ewhoring scams / blackmail how-tos for a long time. And there will always be some crime group that'll send some emails for the cost of a subway card - and they'll update instructions for how to zip up files and bypass dns blocks and such to get the data they need to complete the task. digital literacy about sharing pics with people who say they like you that later turn out not be the person you thought they were - things like that could help. Teaching new 'performers' and others who want to share nudes for money that there will always be possibility that suck files are easily shared and can escape to others would be good too. if you don't want others to see it or it to be shown in a court in public don't send it - internet, sms, etc.

knodi 5y ago

I’m not hating on these women, I understand they’re trying to make a living, and there is nothing wrong with what they’re doing. What you described is the danger of getting into any kind business without fully understanding the risk, market, and potential outcomes.

mrweasel 5y ago

> A 'fan' went nuclear and was waging all out digital war. If I where to change profession it is things like this that would push me towards psychology. I am deeply fascinated by actions of, well, assholes. How are they broken and why?

m12k 5y ago
I see it the other way around: Not being an asshole isn't the default, it's something you need to learn, and not everyone does. I actually have a sneaking suspicion that most people don't learn it, but just learn to fake it while others are watching.
- XCSme 5y ago
  I think that most animals are non-assholes by default, doing mostly what it takes to survive and live as peacefully as possible.
  - NateEag 5y ago
    Go read about young male dolphins' sexual habits. And what mother lions in packs do to cubs other than their own. There are more examples than just those two.

dfxm12 5y ago

The creators would somehow be surprised when they realised we couldn't remove content from other websites. Don't you have skin in this, too? I would expect that you would want to protect your content in much the same way a film studio protects their content when it pops up on 3rd party sites. I don't know if you're being obtuse with your wording here, but whether or not your customers realized that you can't physically remove content from others sites directly is beside the point when there are well known legal options.

jszymborski 5y ago
If I'm totally honest, I never thought of it this way, but humour me this: if OF and the like are considered distributors in the traditional sense of the entertainment world, would they typically be responsible for engaging in legal disputes over unauthorized distribution? My feeble understanding of the law is that it would be more appropriate for copyright holders to sue in instances of illegal distribution. I understand why this isn't an option for most people (they don't have the resources a studio does), but I'm just trying to trace back who has the right to press for charges.
- dfxm12 5y ago
  If a company gets revenue from exclusive content, they should do whatever it takes to make sure that content is exclusive. If a company gets revenue from content creators, they should do what it takes to attract and retain content creators. Whether or not the company owns the copyright in this case, based on these premises, whether that the company has the right to do it themselves, or on behalf of their content creators when they've been asked for this help, it's in the company's best interest to do it.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    If we're discussing this from a "best interest" standpoint, then the studio is no longer obtaining revenue if it's being asked to delete all the content of a specific person on its own sites and thus any obligations of keeping content out of reach from other service providers cease. It's not in the studio's best interests to spend money litigating or issuing DMCA notices on behalf of a former associate.

neonbones 5y ago

I can tell something from a POV of a webcam. My ex-girlfriend was a webcam model on the biggest website (chatur), and she was successful. It was even before the rising and growth of OF, somewhere around 2017. She was happy with her job, and as I know, she is still satisfied with the money she gets from it. Usually, it's around $500-1000 and even $2-3k for one day of work. It's happened because we live in a poor country where it's hard to find a job even with a degree, so you need to survive somehow. And we were younger and more naive. Anyway, the thing is that she was part of the community of webcam models, and most of them working 4-8 hours a day and got around $300-500 in a week. Most of the money goes to 5% of models that appear on the first page. It's a super competitive job, and your only way is to find regular customers who will visit all your streams to tip and talk about random things. There was an old dude who takes private and talked about his daughter and family issues. He was lonely and just want to speak anonymously to someone. But there are also real creeps, one of them even somehow found out where we live and our city and travel here (to Eastern Europe from Korea) to report my ex to the police. He demands that she must have sex with him if she wants that to stop. He was nice to her, and everything was fine, but one day she rejects his request (some crazy fetish things), and he goes mad, and all that happened. You're right. The most significant fans are also the ones who go apeshit when something goes wrong for them, and it's scary to think about people like that and what they can do to break someone's life.

trompetenaccoun 5y ago
Our culture is sick. I don't judge you or your ex-girlfriend for doing it but the whole webcam business shouldn't be a thing. Governments should do more to help socially awkward people make real connections with others outside the internet. Instead people sit at home more and more and then lonely men pay to look at streams of women masturbating. If you got someone to time travel from 100 years ago they'd probably think we've gone full retard.
- mkw2000 5y ago
  You think the government should stop people from jacking off?

standardUser 5y ago

"C" is a tough one and genuinely frightening. Not just the digital assault like you describe, but the danger of physical assault or other crimes. But "A" and "B" are becoming less of a concern for a lot of people thanks to rapidly changing attitudes towards sex work. Most people I know who do some kind of sex work either aren't concerned about a family member of employer finding out, or their family members and employer already know about their work. I hope we can all do our part to continue pushing our society towards being more accepting and less damning of sexuality (market-oriented or otherwise).

throwaway6945 5y ago

What's striking to me is that the negative consequences of sex work are not at all the sex work itself, but the stigma and trauma inflicted on sex workers by other people who ought to mind their own business, but clearly won't and from abuse by mentally ill mostly male sorts taking out their frustrations upon them in increasingly horrible ways. I don't have a solution here. But I also agree that there are plenty of other horrible jobs in the world and it's also striking that the same people who lose their minds over sex work would not raise a peep over those other professions that have little or nothing to do with sex. Judge not lest ye be judged? Yeah right.

tarkin2 5y ago

So do your users assume their fans won’t make copies, somehow, of the content and share it?

chansiky 5y ago

We could also just all stop being prudes about nudity. I can't name a single other species that would shame because one of them is naked.