23 ms·

The off-screen workers who keep the adult webcam industry running

135 points by imartin2k 5y ago

mt_ 5y ago
The pimping industry is evolving.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Which entity is the pimp?
  - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
    A lot of cam/onlyfans/... girls (and guys) are "managed" by people (pimps) in the same way as prostitutes (and strippers) are, but now digitally instead of physically (or, in many cases, both). They lease a building, build "cubicles", make them look like bedrooms, throw in a bunch of girls/guys, who then do stuff there for their viewers, and managers (pimps) collect a part of the earned money. They have a schedule, have to meet quotas, etc. They also hire people to do their make-up, buy toys, manage their accounts, do accounting, price lists for "custom" photos/videos, and even dirty up the underwear that they then sell. Porn is a huge industry, solo actresses are just a very small part of that, even if onlyfans would like you to believe otherwise.
    - CPLX 5y ago
      You’ll be really mad when you hear about all the other businesses that lease buildings and build cubicles and have people come there to do work while skimming off most of the profits. It’s an epidemic.
    - naoqj 5y ago
      That's not pimping. For starters those girls aren't forced to do what they do. (Yeah, there probably is an overwhelming minority of cases where they are forced to show their tits. But let's not grasp at straws...)
      - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        https://endsexualexploitation.org/onlyfans/ https://endsexualexploitation.org/onlyfans/
        naoqj 5y ago
        I understand that some onlyfans creators are being exploited, but the freedom of those who aren't exploited (which are a majority) shouldn't be restricted because of that.
        prepend 5y ago
        I think the difficulty is in knowing who is exploited and who is not.
        0ldskool 5y ago
        Didn't you just describe all jobs in all countries? There are people who feel forced to do immoral or illegal things. For instance I was just reading about one server at a restaurant in USA. He accidentally dropped a steak on the floor but was told to wash it off and serve it to the customer anyways. The argument being the customer would get mad if his food came out later then the rest of his party. How many factory style jobs do people work not because they want to but because circumstances force them to? How many employers exploit their workers because its unlikely the workers will fight back?
        prepend 5y ago
        You may have replied to the wrong person. I didn’t describe jobs in any countries. I don’t think comparing people working in factories to pimps and exploited sex workers (or perhaps pimps and fairly compensated sex workers). They are different things.
        collegeburner 5y ago
        By this logic any job that offered a way to make money during covid could be called "preying on" people. Offering work when people need it is not predatory. I think there are a lot of consequences to this type of work that young women don't consider, not least that they will have a lot more trouble finding a husband (and maybe a job) in 8 years, but that doesn't by itself make the work predatory.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I am under the impression that the distinction of a pimp is due to using violence, drugs, or other coercion on vulnerable subjects such as runaways, underage, or trafficked/kidnapped persons.
      - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
        Yes, that's exactly what they do to (some) onlyfans creators. https://endsexualexploitation.org/onlyfans/ https://endsexualexploitation.org/onlyfans/
        ianhawes 5y ago
        The linked article links to another article describing the CEO of OnlyFans as facing accusations of theft and fraud[0]. In reality, it appears the owner of OnlyFans also owns MyFreeCams, which is a massive cam platform. The actual complaints of theft and fraud are accusations of randomly frozen accounts. Companies like PayPal and even banks periodically freeze accounts, but the CEOs of their company are not targeted in a manner such as the linked article. Further, it is not uncommon to freeze accounts for suspected fraud. Cam platforms are ripe for money laundering with stolen credit cards. Thieves will steal a credit card and use it to pay a model on the platform that they’re working with. The model is paid weeks later and they’ve successfully laundered the money. It does not surprise me that some false positives happen, it’s a pretty tricky cat and mouse game. The article also mentioned requiring people to switch to a bank in Belize. It’s not surprising given that adult payments and adult companies are routinely targeted by puritanical US and International financial institutions. [0] https://forensicnews.net/onlyfans-faces-allegations-of-fraud-theft/ https://forensicnews.net/onlyfans-faces-allegations-of-fraud...
      - stevenicr 5y ago
        So those are types of pimping.. sometimes put into a broad category of 'guerilla pimping'. The main distinction of a pimp is someone who is willing to deal with all the bull shit of the business to help hoes - this was mainly protection from abusers and help with advertising, but also includes a ton of other help - rides, shelter, healthcare appts. 'pimping' became a pop slang term what, around the myspace time? and it's become synonymous with gaudy but cool glamour - 'those shoes are pimpin' - to also jest about 'control' - like "pimpin' these robots to get that paper (money)".. "you are being pimped by toptal". After some years of research I would say not just most (51%) - but more like 99% of 'pimps' want nothing to do with underage, kidnapped, forced/coerced type hoes. This is more of a stereotype that fits some groups' narratives who are often trying to get money to fight boogeymen. Not to say that there shouldn't be money / resources dedicated to destroying the 1% who would use violence to traffic - but I've noticed how easy it is to skew the recently changing narrative / perceptions, and mostly the news is promoting false stereotypes to gain clicks and clout at the expense of real help. This is not to say it's not completely different stats say, south of the border or Baltic or whatever.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      At what point does a manager stop being a pimp? Seems like everyone doing anything businessey that doesn't involve taking off their own clothes in anything even vaguely sex related gets called a pimp. Is a strip club GM a pimp? The whole "maintain and operate facility" thing sounds a lot like a strip club.
      - pyuser583 5y ago
        I read an article by adult performer discussing her career and the “manger/pimp” distinction … Basically “managers” are a thing when you have a large number of employers who need to coordinate. Legit managers can look a lot like pimps. For example, they usually require employees “to be on time” and “always have a good attitude.” But if someone isn’t on time, than everyone else is waiting, and typically not getting paid. So failing to show up on time means your coworkers are paying for you to do your own thing. So there an element of “you know it when you see it.”
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - alm1 5y ago
        earlier in the thread someone provided a definition along the lines of: "a pimp is a manager who is allowed to use violence, drug addiction and other forms of non-consensual coercion."
  - jrootabega 5y ago
    Why not madam?
  - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
    The one taking 75% of the income.
    - crate_barre 5y ago
      How much of the profit do you get from your company? Pennies I’m sure, you are just okay with it because it’s more pennies than other penny makers, but you are not taking home close to the value add on your labor.
      - lupire 5y ago
        Yournargumt maybe applies to Uber drivers and factory workers. Tim Cook and team do not collect anywhere near 75% of the total income of Apple workers.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - prepend 5y ago
        I don’t think it’s equally comparable because there’s typically lots of indirection between a worker and profit. I used to do tech consulting where I would be bodyshopped through a contracting firm and they would typically take 20-40%. I wouldn’t work for a firm that took 75%.
eric4smith 5y ago
A bigger part of all of this is the people who manage many Only Fans performers. I did not know this was a thing until I came across this watching a few podcasts. Then more and more and more I realized this management industry was quite big. And it makes sense, the performers are performers and not really business oriented for the most part. So its a vacuum that was waiting to be filled. Then again, is it really any different from managers for actors, musicians, artists and other "normal" industries? I remember my father who was an artist had a few gallery owners who managed his sales, showings, personal commissions and other artist activities. Now that I think about it decades later, its remarkably like pimping. Hahaha. No wonder dad had a love/have relationship with those people.
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  Not just that... they also lease huge buildings, build "cubicles" inside, furnish them to look like bedrooms, get girls the same way as they would for any other adult business (from human trafficking to working from a very poor country, with enough desparate people for that), and then take a huge cut of profits. Basically pimping out girls, but digitally.
  - eric4smith 5y ago
    Sure. But from what I heard, just managing girls who do it from their home is just as large, if not larger.
    - formerkrogemp 5y ago
      Survivorship bias. You often hear only about the top earners and not the poor person doing onlyfans and working another job. Or two. I'd expect the majority of performers not to live in large, nice houses.
      - dismantlethesun 5y ago
        Majority of performers aren’t really serious about it either. Due to morality constraints, very few people find it easy to buckle down and work 8 hours a day at that job… whereas if they were to pick a body damaging job like construction they would have social support to help them get through the day.
lesgobrandon 5y ago
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
>The Colombian camming industry alone, which is unregulated but legal How can the industry be unregulated if it's legal? I doubt it has the clout to get itself exempted from whatever the normal employment regulations in that country are. To be clear, that was mostly a rhetorical question and I think the author's implied assumption that every industry deserves bespoke regulation by default is asinine. A small industry that's not causing big problems doesn't need legislative attention.
- hnhg 5y ago
  I interpret it to mean it doesn’t have particular regulations that pertain to it and defaults to industry agnostic ones.
- woliveirajr 5y ago
  Legal: it's not forbid. To be illegal, there must be a law forbidding it. Unegulated: no one tells how it should be done. "To regulate something" means that the gorv prescribes how some aspect of the activity must be done. If we have infinite possibilities, the norm is to be legal and unregulated.
  - denotational 5y ago
    I think GP is arguing that (in a lot of jurisdictions) > the norm is to be legal and unregulated doesn't hold for anything that touches employment; as soon as there is deemed by the courts to be an employer--employee relation, all the existing statutes and case law are applicable, so without carve-outs for this specific type of employment it is automatically regulated. Assuming the above, if the employment is _treated_ as though it is not subject to regulations, despite this not being the case, then presumably the law is being broken somewhere. A sibling comment makes the point that if the legal system is underdeveloped, then the it may not be able to capture all the instances of employment that would otherwise fall under regulation.
    - woliveirajr 5y ago
      My reply was made before the post was edited, so some context was lost in all this thread.
casralad 5y ago
It's a little like AOL in the 1990s. A great business model, but one that won't outlast reliable internet access from service providers. Businesses like webcam studios bridge the gap until internet access catches up. There are unsexy, short term business models for entrepreneurs.
wheelerof4te 5y ago
You won't find many "cam girls" from the wealthy western countries. Which tells you everything you need to know about this kind of dirty work.
- sumthinprofound 5y ago
  Moral judgement aside, what makes this "dirty work" in your estimation?
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    It’s a soul crushing job over time. Feeding the lizard brain of guys jerking off to whatever instructions you get gets old, and the money is usually just good enough to keep people around.
    - glogla 5y ago
      > It’s a soul crushing job over time. As opposed to waiting tables, selling finance products, working to deny people insurance coverage programming on surveillance on websites, working in retail, nursing, or any other activity where you're working hard barely scraping so some rich guy can buy 37th private jet? Most jobs are soul crushing. Why single out camgirls?
      - mistrial9 5y ago
        because -- for many humans, actual sex is intimate and touches the "soul" much more than those other activities. Repeated defense of ugly and abusive sex comes from a vocal minority on the Internet
        glogla 5y ago
        Yes, that is what I was expecting. The anti-sex people claim they are interesting in stopping exploitation or whatever, but in the end it is about regulating other people's sex lives and pushing their morality on them.
prepend 5y ago
What percent do these monitors make? It seems like this is written as an “interesting job” type story, but if their percent is exhorbitant (maybe anything over 10%) or if these monitors also take part in human trafficking or drugs then this could be horrible. The story doesn’t answer this question so I suspect that the answers aren’t good.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  It does. They get a base salary, plus a 2% commission from each model they monitor.
  - prepend 5y ago
    I missed that part, thanks for providing it. 2% seems pretty reasonable. What’s their base salary and who pays it? I read one monitor supports 13 workers, do they split the base pay?
ykevinator2 5y ago
tartoran 5y ago
I was reading a story/interview of a depressed cam worker who while not enjoying her work she could not give it up because the money was too good and she wouldn’t be able to find something to pay her something even close. It sounded like a sure golden cuffs type of situation that a lot of SW devs find themselves in. Can’t find the link for it but if I do I’ll post it.
- martini333 5y ago

135 points by imartin2k 5y ago

mt_ 5y ago

The pimping industry is evolving.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
Which entity is the pimp?
- ajsnigrutin 5y ago
  A lot of cam/onlyfans/... girls (and guys) are "managed" by people (pimps) in the same way as prostitutes (and strippers) are, but now digitally instead of physically (or, in many cases, both). They lease a building, build "cubicles", make them look like bedrooms, throw in a bunch of girls/guys, who then do stuff there for their viewers, and managers (pimps) collect a part of the earned money. They have a schedule, have to meet quotas, etc. They also hire people to do their make-up, buy toys, manage their accounts, do accounting, price lists for "custom" photos/videos, and even dirty up the underwear that they then sell. Porn is a huge industry, solo actresses are just a very small part of that, even if onlyfans would like you to believe otherwise.
  - CPLX 5y ago
    You’ll be really mad when you hear about all the other businesses that lease buildings and build cubicles and have people come there to do work while skimming off most of the profits. It’s an epidemic.
  - naoqj 5y ago
    That's not pimping. For starters those girls aren't forced to do what they do. (Yeah, there probably is an overwhelming minority of cases where they are forced to show their tits. But let's not grasp at straws...)
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      https://endsexualexploitation.org/onlyfans/ https://endsexualexploitation.org/onlyfans/
      - naoqj 5y ago
        I understand that some onlyfans creators are being exploited, but the freedom of those who aren't exploited (which are a majority) shouldn't be restricted because of that.
        prepend 5y ago
        I think the difficulty is in knowing who is exploited and who is not.
        0ldskool 5y ago
        Didn't you just describe all jobs in all countries? There are people who feel forced to do immoral or illegal things. For instance I was just reading about one server at a restaurant in USA. He accidentally dropped a steak on the floor but was told to wash it off and serve it to the customer anyways. The argument being the customer would get mad if his food came out later then the rest of his party. How many factory style jobs do people work not because they want to but because circumstances force them to? How many employers exploit their workers because its unlikely the workers will fight back?
        prepend 5y ago
        You may have replied to the wrong person. I didn’t describe jobs in any countries. I don’t think comparing people working in factories to pimps and exploited sex workers (or perhaps pimps and fairly compensated sex workers). They are different things.
      - collegeburner 5y ago
        By this logic any job that offered a way to make money during covid could be called "preying on" people. Offering work when people need it is not predatory. I think there are a lot of consequences to this type of work that young women don't consider, not least that they will have a lot more trouble finding a husband (and maybe a job) in 8 years, but that doesn't by itself make the work predatory.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    I am under the impression that the distinction of a pimp is due to using violence, drugs, or other coercion on vulnerable subjects such as runaways, underage, or trafficked/kidnapped persons.
    - ajsnigrutin 5y ago
      Yes, that's exactly what they do to (some) onlyfans creators. https://endsexualexploitation.org/onlyfans/ https://endsexualexploitation.org/onlyfans/
      - ianhawes 5y ago
        The linked article links to another article describing the CEO of OnlyFans as facing accusations of theft and fraud[0]. In reality, it appears the owner of OnlyFans also owns MyFreeCams, which is a massive cam platform. The actual complaints of theft and fraud are accusations of randomly frozen accounts. Companies like PayPal and even banks periodically freeze accounts, but the CEOs of their company are not targeted in a manner such as the linked article. Further, it is not uncommon to freeze accounts for suspected fraud. Cam platforms are ripe for money laundering with stolen credit cards. Thieves will steal a credit card and use it to pay a model on the platform that they’re working with. The model is paid weeks later and they’ve successfully laundered the money. It does not surprise me that some false positives happen, it’s a pretty tricky cat and mouse game. The article also mentioned requiring people to switch to a bank in Belize. It’s not surprising given that adult payments and adult companies are routinely targeted by puritanical US and International financial institutions. [0] https://forensicnews.net/onlyfans-faces-allegations-of-fraud-theft/ https://forensicnews.net/onlyfans-faces-allegations-of-fraud...
    - stevenicr 5y ago
      So those are types of pimping.. sometimes put into a broad category of 'guerilla pimping'. The main distinction of a pimp is someone who is willing to deal with all the bull shit of the business to help hoes - this was mainly protection from abusers and help with advertising, but also includes a ton of other help - rides, shelter, healthcare appts. 'pimping' became a pop slang term what, around the myspace time? and it's become synonymous with gaudy but cool glamour - 'those shoes are pimpin' - to also jest about 'control' - like "pimpin' these robots to get that paper (money)".. "you are being pimped by toptal". After some years of research I would say not just most (51%) - but more like 99% of 'pimps' want nothing to do with underage, kidnapped, forced/coerced type hoes. This is more of a stereotype that fits some groups' narratives who are often trying to get money to fight boogeymen. Not to say that there shouldn't be money / resources dedicated to destroying the 1% who would use violence to traffic - but I've noticed how easy it is to skew the recently changing narrative / perceptions, and mostly the news is promoting false stereotypes to gain clicks and clout at the expense of real help. This is not to say it's not completely different stats say, south of the border or Baltic or whatever.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    At what point does a manager stop being a pimp? Seems like everyone doing anything businessey that doesn't involve taking off their own clothes in anything even vaguely sex related gets called a pimp. Is a strip club GM a pimp? The whole "maintain and operate facility" thing sounds a lot like a strip club.
    - pyuser583 5y ago
      I read an article by adult performer discussing her career and the “manger/pimp” distinction … Basically “managers” are a thing when you have a large number of employers who need to coordinate. Legit managers can look a lot like pimps. For example, they usually require employees “to be on time” and “always have a good attitude.” But if someone isn’t on time, than everyone else is waiting, and typically not getting paid. So failing to show up on time means your coworkers are paying for you to do your own thing. So there an element of “you know it when you see it.”
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - alm1 5y ago
      earlier in the thread someone provided a definition along the lines of: "a pimp is a manager who is allowed to use violence, drug addiction and other forms of non-consensual coercion."
- jrootabega 5y ago
  Why not madam?
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  The one taking 75% of the income.
  - crate_barre 5y ago
    How much of the profit do you get from your company? Pennies I’m sure, you are just okay with it because it’s more pennies than other penny makers, but you are not taking home close to the value add on your labor.
    - lupire 5y ago
      Yournargumt maybe applies to Uber drivers and factory workers. Tim Cook and team do not collect anywhere near 75% of the total income of Apple workers.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - prepend 5y ago
      I don’t think it’s equally comparable because there’s typically lots of indirection between a worker and profit. I used to do tech consulting where I would be bodyshopped through a contracting firm and they would typically take 20-40%. I wouldn’t work for a firm that took 75%.

eric4smith 5y ago

A bigger part of all of this is the people who manage many Only Fans performers. I did not know this was a thing until I came across this watching a few podcasts. Then more and more and more I realized this management industry was quite big. And it makes sense, the performers are performers and not really business oriented for the most part. So its a vacuum that was waiting to be filled. Then again, is it really any different from managers for actors, musicians, artists and other "normal" industries? I remember my father who was an artist had a few gallery owners who managed his sales, showings, personal commissions and other artist activities. Now that I think about it decades later, its remarkably like pimping. Hahaha. No wonder dad had a love/have relationship with those people.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago
Not just that... they also lease huge buildings, build "cubicles" inside, furnish them to look like bedrooms, get girls the same way as they would for any other adult business (from human trafficking to working from a very poor country, with enough desparate people for that), and then take a huge cut of profits. Basically pimping out girls, but digitally.
- eric4smith 5y ago
  Sure. But from what I heard, just managing girls who do it from their home is just as large, if not larger.
  - formerkrogemp 5y ago
    Survivorship bias. You often hear only about the top earners and not the poor person doing onlyfans and working another job. Or two. I'd expect the majority of performers not to live in large, nice houses.
    - dismantlethesun 5y ago
      Majority of performers aren’t really serious about it either. Due to morality constraints, very few people find it easy to buckle down and work 8 hours a day at that job… whereas if they were to pick a body damaging job like construction they would have social support to help them get through the day.

lesgobrandon 5y ago

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

>The Colombian camming industry alone, which is unregulated but legal How can the industry be unregulated if it's legal? I doubt it has the clout to get itself exempted from whatever the normal employment regulations in that country are. To be clear, that was mostly a rhetorical question and I think the author's implied assumption that every industry deserves bespoke regulation by default is asinine. A small industry that's not causing big problems doesn't need legislative attention.

hnhg 5y ago
I interpret it to mean it doesn’t have particular regulations that pertain to it and defaults to industry agnostic ones.
woliveirajr 5y ago
Legal: it's not forbid. To be illegal, there must be a law forbidding it. Unegulated: no one tells how it should be done. "To regulate something" means that the gorv prescribes how some aspect of the activity must be done. If we have infinite possibilities, the norm is to be legal and unregulated.
- denotational 5y ago
  I think GP is arguing that (in a lot of jurisdictions) > the norm is to be legal and unregulated doesn't hold for anything that touches employment; as soon as there is deemed by the courts to be an employer--employee relation, all the existing statutes and case law are applicable, so without carve-outs for this specific type of employment it is automatically regulated. Assuming the above, if the employment is _treated_ as though it is not subject to regulations, despite this not being the case, then presumably the law is being broken somewhere. A sibling comment makes the point that if the legal system is underdeveloped, then the it may not be able to capture all the instances of employment that would otherwise fall under regulation.
  - woliveirajr 5y ago
    My reply was made before the post was edited, so some context was lost in all this thread.

casralad 5y ago

It's a little like AOL in the 1990s. A great business model, but one that won't outlast reliable internet access from service providers. Businesses like webcam studios bridge the gap until internet access catches up. There are unsexy, short term business models for entrepreneurs.

wheelerof4te 5y ago

You won't find many "cam girls" from the wealthy western countries. Which tells you everything you need to know about this kind of dirty work.

sumthinprofound 5y ago
Moral judgement aside, what makes this "dirty work" in your estimation?
- Spooky23 5y ago
  It’s a soul crushing job over time. Feeding the lizard brain of guys jerking off to whatever instructions you get gets old, and the money is usually just good enough to keep people around.
  - glogla 5y ago
    > It’s a soul crushing job over time. As opposed to waiting tables, selling finance products, working to deny people insurance coverage programming on surveillance on websites, working in retail, nursing, or any other activity where you're working hard barely scraping so some rich guy can buy 37th private jet? Most jobs are soul crushing. Why single out camgirls?
    - mistrial9 5y ago
      because -- for many humans, actual sex is intimate and touches the "soul" much more than those other activities. Repeated defense of ugly and abusive sex comes from a vocal minority on the Internet
      - glogla 5y ago
        Yes, that is what I was expecting. The anti-sex people claim they are interesting in stopping exploitation or whatever, but in the end it is about regulating other people's sex lives and pushing their morality on them.

prepend 5y ago

What percent do these monitors make? It seems like this is written as an “interesting job” type story, but if their percent is exhorbitant (maybe anything over 10%) or if these monitors also take part in human trafficking or drugs then this could be horrible. The story doesn’t answer this question so I suspect that the answers aren’t good.

FireBeyond 5y ago
It does. They get a base salary, plus a 2% commission from each model they monitor.
- prepend 5y ago
  I missed that part, thanks for providing it. 2% seems pretty reasonable. What’s their base salary and who pays it? I read one monitor supports 13 workers, do they split the base pay?

ykevinator2 5y ago

tartoran 5y ago

I was reading a story/interview of a depressed cam worker who while not enjoying her work she could not give it up because the money was too good and she wouldn’t be able to find something to pay her something even close. It sounded like a sure golden cuffs type of situation that a lot of SW devs find themselves in. Can’t find the link for it but if I do I’ll post it.

martini333 5y ago