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Breaking Down OnlyFans' Economics
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tonymet 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- squigz 2y ago> Nearly every creator is making little and are forced to make more and more extreme content to compete. > A huge segment of "creators" are still working for online "networks" aka pimps who force them to share their earnings under threat of abuse. Can you link some sources for these?
- tonymet 2y ago[flagged]
- mschuster91 2y agoguess they're referring to Andrew Tate and his network, the prosecutors allege that they were behind at least six women, controlling them (including violence) and taking half of their OF income [1]. They themselves claim they have 75 women netting them 600k a month on OF alone, so assuming the prosecutor's claims of them taking 50% hold up it's like 1.2 million a month. I'm torn a bit here as I happen to know people actually active on their own on OF, but it's on the other side not much of a stretch to assume that the Tate brothers are the only abusive pimps in the game. 600k a month is a ton of money, for a very low effort and low-risk (as long as you don't brag that you bought off police forces) operation. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/andrew-tate-alleged-victims-onlyfans-tiktok-controlled-by-female-confidants-2023-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/andrew-tate-alleged-victims-...
- tonymet 2y ago[flagged]
- squigz 2y ago[flagged]
- tonymet 2y ago[flagged]
- squigz 2y agoThat's not surprising.
- tonymet 2y ago[flagged]
- dang 2y agoYou broke the site guidelines repeatedly in this thread. That's not cool. We have to ban accounts that post this way. I'm not going to ban you this time because you've also posted good things and I didn't see a pattern of it in your account history. But please don't do it again. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. (I'm not commenting on your views about porn or anything else. We don't care about that. But we care a lot about you following the rules, just as with any other commenter.)
- infecto 2y agoDo you have data or research to back these opinions with?
- tonymet 2y ago[flagged]
- Supermancho 2y agoTheir opinion on what constitutes "porn" is probably reductive. It's not a straightforward scale or a solid line. There's a lot of nuance in how far away nudity is from pure lace, to corset, shoulderless, miniskirt, onesie, all the way to burka.
- tonymet 2y ago[flagged]
- Supermancho 2y agoI am not interested in another non sequitor. Good luck with whatever.
- tonymet 2y agosee my comment above
- appendix-rock 2y agoI know a few people that ‘do’ OnlyFans (…and yes, I don’t know them through via their job). The money they’re making ranges from ‘fairly ok supplementary income’ to ‘more than satisfies their financial needs’. None have been involved with these ‘online pimps’ as you put it. I’m not saying that what you’re saying doesn’t happen. I’m aware that you said “a huge segment”. But you’re showing your hand in your final paragraph. If one has a moral etc view to cut this issue one way or another, there’s sufficient anecdata to do so. The reality is that the adult entertainment industry is large and heterogenous.
- dachworker 2y agoIt's not safer in any way, at all. The prostitutes are not transitioning to OF. They are using it as a promotional mechanism. So you have not really eliminated the risk for them. In addition to that you have young people who would have never dared to do porn, and you lower the bar enough for them, so that they are now tempted to ruin their dignity. And finally, the human traffickers like Andrew Tate now have a new platform that allows them to practice their human trafficking from the relative safety of countries like Romania or Ukraine, where the chance that they will be caught and prosecuted is quite low. There have already been cases where multiple OF creators were found to be human trafficking victims working for a pimp. Don't believe the whole pinkwashing narrative. OF is twice the pimping, making is safer for human traffickers to enslave and profit off women than ever before.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tonymet 2y agoI'm shocked this is downvoted. I guess there are so many porn addicts here that they prefer to cope and ignore all of the abuses that OF is facilitating . What's worse is that the OF financial statement seems to absolve them of responsibility . Vile
- tennisflyi 2y agoSeminal article (I guess), https://xsrus.com/the-economics-of-onlyfans https://xsrus.com/the-economics-of-onlyfans > It’s just as easy to imagine demand for the “real thing” going down due to the emergence of more substitutes as it is to imagine the premium for parasocial authenticity going up. And yet only Generative AI “creators” will truly do whatever “you” want and only for you. And unlike real ones, they speak in every language and are available at any time (and eventually, in immersive 3D). Disagree. When (AI is) mentioned it has a negative correlation. Real content will fetch a premium
- nemothekid 2y agoIt's the same pipe dream as "AI content creators will take over youtube". There is no "formula" for success in the creator economy - the winners are largely random. A better way to look at it is there are 4 million humans out there trying every permutation to crack success, and ~400k actually do it. Unless you have a sufficiently advanced AI agent that is both varying it's content and it's marketing strategy to the tune of maybe ~1000 different iterations it's unlikely we will see a version of OnlyFans that exists that is majority AI generated. The "parasocial ai girlfriend" sounds like a flawed premise aswell. OF girls are not therapists - Cardi B, Bhad Bhabie, and others aren't raking in millions because they are good girlfriends (although that is part of the upsell). Social status plays a part in the most successful girls, people seem to subscribe because the creator is popular, especially if she's already built a platform elsewhere. In short, social status does not have an AI substitute.
- ghaff 2y agoFrom another angle, a bunch of us in the tech sector made pretty nice salaries. Very few of us were really all-stars in the sense that everyone knew who we we were on YouTube, etc. Which was fine.
- kiba 2y agoA good AI girlfriend wouldn't be a therapist but would mimics every aspect of a girlfriend, including arguments and fights and makeups, because that's how bonding occurs. That's going to be how successful AI girlfriend will be made.
- throw7 2y ago2/3 of its revenues were from the U.S. That's... sad.
- xyst 2y agoI wonder how much of that is from a group of lonely whales.
- dragonwriter 2y ago> 2/3 of its revenues were from the U.S. That's... sad. Probably common for a lot of luxury products; US is like 1/4 of world GDP, and a lot higher than that in personal income beyond basic needs.
- 1oooqooq 2y agoTiktok ban mentions of WeChat just like they been saying onlyfans.
- jimmygrapes 2y agoBut still around 4 to 5% of the global population. Every stat in the global context of usage/consumerism gets weird when you consider this, and even weirder when you account for debt-to-income ratio.
- dragonwriter 2y ago> But still around 4 to 5% of the global population. Yeah, but so? "Subsisitence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa spend substantially less per capita on online adult entertainment than Americans" is...not a surprising bit of information. > Every stat in the global context of usage/consumerism gets weird when you consider this Seems to me that the weird thing is the implicit premise that consumer and especially luxury spending should be expected to track population and not wealth. > and even weirder when you account for debt-to-income ratio. Are you assuming that the ability to borrow should be negatively correlated with luxury spending?
- yen223 2y ago
- rationalfaith 2y ago[dead]
- mjfl 2y ago[flagged]
- mattfrommars 2y agoThat makes OnlyFans ugly. Good find!
- mjfl 2y ago[flagged]
- mattfrommars 2y agoHow did it get flagged? I don't have the option to down vote, per say
- mjfl 2y agoother people came and flagged it
- mattfrommars 2y agoIt got flagged again. Wtf
- ldjkfkdsjnv 2y agoOnlyFans is run by a very small tight knit group of people. A while back, I sat at a poker table in vegas with one for 5 hours. We discussed technology and the future of OF. I was offered a job to run a technology team there - often think I made a mistake not taking it.
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoSuper interesting I wish I was cut throat enough to know real players in internet commerce
- monero-xmr 2y agoI know this team also. Very tight group that came from a prior failure. Very focused and knowledgeable of legal minefields.
- brandnewideas 2y agoYou probably did. Pornography plays an important role in shaping and controlling today's societies and the powers that be will certainly push its distributors and creators more and more in the future.
- Fluorescence 2y ago> important role in shaping and controlling today's societies In what ways? As an industry, it seems pretty much a pariah. In terms of political power, the religious organisations that that pressure the finance system to break ties with pornography seem more powerful. Maybe it influences culture/perceptions about relationships and sex in more ways than I can see.
- xyst 2y agoWow - those AI generated influencers would be enough to fool older populations. If I was a shitty person, I would build my own network of “influencers” to manage and pump money from the lonely/desperate. Baby steps towards the “dead internet theory”
- CSMastermind 2y agoI have a buddy how likes to tell how he "had the idea for Onlyfans first" but I advised him not to pursue it. The reality is that OnlyFans wasn't the first to try this model. You have to give them credit for successfully building the business, especially with several close calls between them and government regulations.
- doix 2y agoYeah, I'm sure millions of people had this idea. My friends and I talked about it at some point as well. The problem is the payment processor. How the heck do you accept adult-content related payments? That is the hardest problem to solve when it comes to these things in my book.
- creer 2y agoSecond is the issue of promotion: how to you become known to enough fans to make it worth it. The sites offer a true service of discovery.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoSeemingly, it is posting a variety of content on Reddit that incentivized people to click on usernames which then advertise the OF.
- paulpauper 2y agoPayment processing for porn has existed a long time. The problem is trying to convince people to pay for porn. The assumption was free tube site would replace membership sites, as the was the trend already.
- mattfrommars 2y agoPayment is the hardest part in this space. Somehow OnlyFans had the privilege to use Stripe for all their transactions. It's beyond knowing the business model, I guess the founder were at the right place and right time and knew the right people to make this venture succeed. Also, the marketing, how the heck did these guy blow up so fast. The funds for marketing and all, it's not cheap!
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoI find myself a little sad at how lucrative a job this will appear for an entire generation. $1500 average creator pay is higher than 40 hours a week minimum wage.
- evantbyrne 2y agoWho do you know that's making $9/hour avg today? That's what I was earning at a student job back in 2010.
- kylehotchkiss 2y ago16 states still have minimum wage at $7.25/hour https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wages https://www.ncsl.org/labor-and-employment/state-minimum-wage... and I presume there still exist employers who don’t offer much more.
- paxys 2y agoFederal minimum wage is largely an irrelevant number. <1% of hourly workers in the country are making minimum wage. And most of those are making below minimum wage (under the table), so their wage would remain low even if the government raised the number.
- BizarroLand 2y agoIt seems to be 1.3% of all hourly workers: https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-people-are-earning-725-hour/ https://usafacts.org/articles/minimum-wage-america-how-many-... However, that figure doesn't include the people who make a dime over minimum wage. 23.3% of American households earn less than $35,000/yr https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distribution-of-household-income-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distri... This number would decrease dramatically if our national minimum wage was raised to $15 or more per hour.
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- nemo44x 2y agoThis is why PornHub was sold to bag holders earlier seemingly out of nowhere. Their business is dead. Second point - is this really Europe’s most successful tech company of the last 15 years?!
- knallfrosch 2y agoThe article limits the claim to a "probably" and "UK" > it is probably the most successful UK company founded since DeepMind in 2010
- Peroni 2y ago>$6.3 billion in gross revenues Not sure I can name many US companies founded in the last 15 years with higher revenue numbers
- paxys 2y agoUK != Europe
- lucb1e 2y agoOr at least, don't tell them
- binary132 2y ago[flagged]
- hungie 2y agoPorn is fine. Sex has been a part of our social fabric for longer than we've been human. Obviously, there exists a lot of exploitation in porn, but performers who enjoy doing it and can support themselves with it on a platform like of? More power to them.
- knallfrosch 2y agoTaking a wild guess, I'd say binary132's main concern was the lasting effect on the consumers, not the producers. Girls' broken self-image, male porn addiction, substituting real intimacy, proliferating bad sex practises just to name a few.
- mschuster91 2y ago[dead]
- Freak_NL 2y agoDoesn't that put it in the same realm as alcohol? Best enjoyed in moderation and all that. Those concerns are valid, but not necessarily solved by shunning porn. Besides, where do you draw the line?
- binary132 2y agoPersonally I consider it more along the lines of heroin.
- binary132 2y agoIt’s definitely not good for producers either. But yeah, the broader cultural impact is on the scale of many millions of people, some of whom develop debilitating addictions, including many kids. “Sex work” has always and probably will always exist, but it’s never been a publicly consumed service at this scale.
- listless 2y agoIs anyone willing to admit they subscribe to an OF and explain why over the free pornography alternatives that most of the internet is full of?
- conductr 2y agoMy proverbial homies that use it say it's because they get private show or host will watch via a 2-way video. It's basically peep shows and phone sex meets FaceTime. Stuff like this is why the growing part of their business is "One-off Transactions". It should be called "Jerk-off Transactions" because that's how it's being used.
- colechristensen 2y agoI have known people who have been content creators on OF or similar. The whole industry is pretty abusive and exploitative, but on platforms like OF you can be more (certainly not entirely, but more) sure that the creator isn't being exploited and is the one benefitting from the work. A big part of it is also the creator interacting with the fans up to creating custom content for individuals.
- TheCapeGreek 2y agoI would liken it as "digital sexual companionship" in many cases, rather than just porn. That's the value here, for a lot of the same reasons that people would engage with a "traditional" prostitute/escort. It's just cheaper (at first), and less likely to get you arrested or put in dangerous areas. The article makes mention of AI content potentially coming for this industry, but I believe it's the "GirlfriendGPT" and similar that will be the bigger threat, once they improve.
- logicchains 2y agoSome of the OF models are more physically attractive than most of the actors in free pornography. There's lots of free pornography on the internet but very little of it contains 9s and 10s.
- flwi 2y agoI think it is the general attractiveness of para social relationships (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction). People look for personal, intimate interactions. OF creates (the illusion of) such relationships.
- braza 2y agoNot a moralistic take, but one issue that interests me is the second-order impacts associated with the long tail of producers in OF who do not make a career from it. With traditional adult entertainment, creators are aware of the social ramifications (e.g., social stigma, familial ostracism, difficulty dealing with the future, and so on), and there is a decent theoretical economic framework to measure that. I am not sure if there's the same this new army of "civilians" joining OF, let alone the additional toll it will take on the creators in terms of social ostracism, future prospects, future opportunities, and mental health.
- bool3max 2y agoThat issue exists in the context of all other novel "social media" careers as well.
- tessierashpool9 2y agonot to the extent of having a video published where you have sex - to put it mildly.
- debesyla 2y agoYeah but having sex on tape isn't something special or shameful.
- beaglesss 2y agoIf you take a video of taking a shit mostly no one is gonna think you're immoral or shameful but if there's videos plastered everywhere of you shitting on cam for cash then it could be detrimental to your social standing.
- debesyla 2y agoI would argue that video of taking a shit could display video production and marketing skills better than, let's say, doing a socially unacceptable political rant. But I agree that probabbly being super racist is currently more accepted in some social media than showing genitals. I'm not promoting it, of course.
- omnee 2y agoTwo parts stand out for me: 1. COVID: The explosion in revenues during 2020 is self explanatory. 2. Product market fit/Execution: The owners having previously created other, albeit, unsuccessful platforms certainly helped with creating Onlyfans. This is a very simple idea that thousands will have had, but creating it successfully necessarily requires a good understanding of a sector avoided by most major corporations.
- lucb1e 2y ago1: is it? Why would the established platforms not get that boost instead? I don't find this very self explanatory, do explain :)
- eszed 2y agoJust guessing, but OF's social interaction (or "interaction", if you will) with creators was more appealing whilst we were all starved for human connection.
- lucb1e 2y agoThere's various places where you can talk directly with the person offering their services though, that's not something OF newly introduced to the internet -- if that's what you meant by their "social interaction" since I haven't used OF so could be missing a detail
- eszed 2y agoYeah, it sounds like nothing they did was really new (though maybe packaged and marketed in fresh ways), but did manage to line up with the zeitgeist - perhaps including the Pandemic - in ways other companies didn't. It's all in the timing, sometimes.
- hypertele-Xii 2y ago[flagged]
- GaryNumanVevo 2y agoThere she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. Ezekiel 23:20
- lucaspfeifer 2y agoHere's a little more of that chapter: For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am about to deliver you into the hands of those you hate, to those you turned away from in disgust. 29 They will deal with you in hatred and take away everything you have worked for. They will leave you stark naked, and the shame of your prostitution will be exposed. Your lewdness and promiscuity 30 have brought this on you, because you lusted after the nations and defiled yourself with their idols. 31 You have gone the way of your sister; so I will put her cup into your hand. Ezekiel 23: 28-31 (NIV)
- dachworker 2y agoBeing a digital pimp is just as morally disgusting as being an irl pimp.
- GaryNumanVevo 2y agoThis is the free market, check your moral reservations at the door.
- arandomusername 2y agoSo you would have no reservations about a business selling class A drugs to kids? Free market after all.
- itsoktocry 2y agoYes, selling drugs to kids and being a "content creator" on OnlyFans are the same thing.
- arandomusername 2y agoIn an untethered free market, how are they different?
- GaryNumanVevo 2y ago[flagged]
- arandomusername 2y agoI think that's a horrible way to go about life, and I am glad most do not share your outlook and do take moral responsibility for their actions.
- GaryNumanVevo 2y agoI would simply not let my children decide to buy drugs based on what the free market provides
- rrr_oh_man 2y agoIt's really interesting to read the comments here — I would not have expected this type of moralistic attitude from such a large share of commenters.
- paganel 2y ago[flagged]
- defrost 2y agoNot all moral codes align. A Man's got to have a code https://old.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/t3ptd/about_the_quote_a_mans_got_to_have_a_code_does/ https://old.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/t3ptd/about_the...
- rrr_oh_man 2y agoWhat's yours?
- paxys 2y agoMorals like "don't harm others" and "be nice", sure. "A woman should be modest and keep her body covered"...not really.
- paganel 2y agoThat's your opinion, and this wasn't about a woman wearing a dress or not, it was about women selling their sex to men in exchange for money, because this is what this is (even though the sex is virtual, it's still sex). So, yes, it is important to have morals in situations like this one and see companies like OnlyFans for what they truly are, i.e. SV-funded pimp organisations.
- standardUser 2y agoWhat precisely is wrong with consensually selling sex?
- lifesaver_mint 2y ago[flagged]
- RandomThoughts3 2y agoWhat I find fascinating/disturbing with OnlyFans and in some way with Twitch and streaming in general is more the client side than the creators. Here are basically people paying, and paying a lot, for parasocial relationships. Because clearly it’s not about the content per see which is a dim a dozen and available for free in trove. I think it says something quite dark about our society as a whole that we have basically commoditised distress and are encouraging some people often themselves in dire circumstances to prey on others to the benefits of the middle men. I find these new pimps scarier than the old sort in that they pretend to have clean hands.
- makeitdouble 2y ago> Because clearly it’s not about the content per see which is a dim a dozen and available for free in trove. I think you should step back and look at it with a bit of distance. Is the content they're paying for really the same as you think is available for free, and do they even get it under the same conditions, in morality and circumstance. Not knowing your life, it feels like you could have said the same towards people buying pricy concert tickets when there's royalty free music abundantly available. > commoditised distress [...] often in dire situations The first step to alleviate these specific situations could be to stop marginalizing this kind of content and give them a regular professional status, instead of systematicly pigeon hole it.
- ant_li0n 2y ago> The first step to alleviate these specific situations could be to stop marginalizing this kind of content and give them a regular professional status, instead of systematicly pigeon hole it I dislike arguments made in this vein, it's sortof a way to intellectually dismiss someone's point without addressing it. I share the grandparent poster's concern. Parasocial relationships feed us in a certain way, but do not nourish. Don't get me wrong; I'd rather have OnlyFans than pimps. But that's not the point.
- makeitdouble 2y agoI'm not sure what's to address about parent's point, in that it's already a focus of law enforcement, there will be widely popular polical campaigns to gather people with these inclinations, and it's the standard rethoric of most western societies. I don't see the CrossFit like dogma of "if it's not working just do more of it" as beneficial in this topic. I also don't like looking at a service like OF and only focusing on the extremes.
- paxys 2y ago> The company counted an average of only 42 employees in 2023, down from 61 two years earlier. During the year, it generated $31MM in net revenue per employee (13-28x that of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft) and $15.5MM in operating profit (27-560x). This is the wildest part. One company that is proving all the "why does <company> need 10000 engineers?" takes true.
- PUSH_AX 2y agoIt's easy to say this without knowing what is suffering as a result.
- paxys 2y agoWhat is suffering as a result?
- cruffle_duffle 2y agoThe all important 99.99% uptime with a P99.9 request latency of 10ms globally? As you know, porn sites have a strict SLA that not even AWS has to meet. …but as others pointed out there I’m sure there is an army of contractors that don’t factor into any headcount figure. Which doesn’t at all subtract from the insane revenue per employee figure.
- blackhawkC17 2y agoThey employ hundreds of contractors to run the operations.
- preciousoo 2y agoIt could be compliance/moderation efforts, this is not specified
- jandrese 2y agoIf that's true then the statement is basically an accounting lie.
- helsinkiandrew 2y ago> These reports, which have not been independently verified, show her lifetime gross billings exceed $70 million, with Bhabie collecting $57 million. Over half of revenues were generated via paid messages with individual users (which may include custom audio-visual content). I can see how 10's of thousands of people paying $25 a month can generate millions but $25M on private messages in a year is over $70K a day - how many is she doing or how much do they cost each?
- isolli 2y agoFrom the article: > In many cases, the responses are actually written by a member of the creator’s extended team – remember, many of these creators are now multi-million dollar enterprises, and its obviously impossible for creators such as Bhad Bhabie to engage in detailed and personalized conversations with their scores of VIP subscribers – though this alleged subterfuge has resulted in some legal action.
- kragen 2y agoi don't see why it would be impossible to engage in detailed and personalized conversations with scores of subscribers? a one-on-one detailed and personalized conversation might require half an hour, and if you're an extraverted person you can probably spend ten hours a day doing this, which is a score of people every day. in a 28-day month you could then engage in detailed and personalized conversations with 560 subscribers, which boosts the number from 'scores' to 'hundreds' if you're talking to them in some kind of textual instant messenger, rather than over the phone or video chat, you can probably maintain two to four detailed and personalized conversations at a time, which would boost that number into the low thousands you're just conversing with people, not fucking them, and there are in fact real-life prostitutes who serve scores of clients per month still i'd probably agree if ball had said 'thousands'. but 'scores' sounds easy
- qingcharles 2y agoOn OF the creators use private messaging sell what is known as PPV (pay-per-view). They upsell things that aren't available with the subscription, such as more intimate videos. Often they will sell custom created content. I know one woman who charges $800 for a single custom photo.
- darepublic 2y ago> Usually, such a ban would destroy a media platforms’ business model, but browser-based experiences are fine for viewing photos and videos and sending messages (in contrast, most games can’t even run). And while apps tend to offer better user experiences and far simpler payment processes, most OnlyFans customers aren’t dissuaded by the need to use a browser, nor the extra hoops involved in manually entering a credit card number This is a baffling section where the author goes out of their way to bash browsers vs apps. Maybe there are a lot of cons to apps that browsers don't have. Basically all of the sleights against browsers in this section are not true. When I buy something from amazon, from my browser, I definitely do not need to manually enter my credit card in every time.
- prox 2y agoYeah, browsers to me represent freedom against locked in/tracking of apps. I rejoice browsers every day.
- eastbound 2y agoBrowsers are multitasking, phones are slow-loading single screens at a time. For me, iPhone feels like surfing the web with a 46kbauds modem. Single page at a time. Want to load two? IT RELOADS.
- beeflet 2y ago> most games can’t even run Eh, with WebGL and WebRTC maybe. The problem is input
- brikym 2y agoAndroid has shown PWAs can work fine for most applications. Apps are only a big deal because Apple cripples PWAs.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dreamcompiler 2y agoWebsites also never throw up a dialog saying "This app has expired. Please update it to continue." Almost all my apps do this to me about once a month. [Obviously I don't let Android update my apps automatically in the background. That way lies madness.]
- d_burfoot 2y agoThe widespread impact of the OF economy is obvious to many gym-goers. At my local gym you can see the usual assortment of bodybuilding guys (same as it's been for decades), and then you can see 2-3 girls who are clearly trying to make it into the top 0.1% of hotness so they can cash in on OF (or maybe Instagram). This latter group is a recent phenomenon.
- malfist 2y agoWhy do you assume women in gyms are trying to make money on OnlyFans?
- ronsor 2y agoThere is a new-ish phenomenon of some women going to the gym, setting up suspiciously placed cameras, and then uploading to TikTok (or Instagram or OF) with complaints that the people in the background - who do not want to be recorded - are "staring." It is usually obvious what they're doing. It's not merely "there are women in the gym."
- cruffle_duffle 2y agoI’m sure that is a trend that came and went though. You can only manufacture so much of the same rage bait before it loses its potency. I’m sure this group of people moved into suspiciously placed cameras in the produce isle or maybe gas station or something.
- jeffhuys 2y agoYou’re sure… well… not sure enough I guess. It still happens a lot, at least where I go
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- IncreasePosts 2y agoSure, but that doesn't inform you of what percent of women in the gym filming themselves are doing it for rage bait. Some might just want to check out their form. Or upload an inspirational workout video.
- rybosworld 2y agoIt does seem like the business preys on, primarily teenage boys, in a way that traditional pornography does not. If you look up the user demographics, you'll notice an obvious problem: The demographics do not include the number of users under 18. https://techreport.com/statistics/software-web/onlyfans-statistics/ https://techreport.com/statistics/software-web/onlyfans-stat... Some may say: well that's because you have to be 18 to use the site. But that's not true. Anyone can signup for onlyfans without entering their age. Onlyfans only does age verification for creators. If you think this site isn't primarily being used by teenagers, then I have a bridge to sell you.
- itsoktocry 2y ago>preys on What do you mean by "preys on"? Teenage boys seek out porn, is normal. There's nothing magical about this type of porn. If they are breaking the ToS and committing credit card fraud, who's at fault?
- rybosworld 2y agoThe preying on part, is imo, the para-social relationships that creators form with users. Society figured out a long time ago that teenagers are susceptible to being taken advantage of by adults. It's why every modern nation has age of consent laws. But onlyfans circumvents that. Creators interact with users, and the users, mostly teenagers, can interact back. This happens on twitch as well, and twitch is used as a funnel for onlyfans. I think it's hard to argue that there isn't a fundamental difference between: - watching recorded porn - a social media platform that allows pornstars to chat with and perform private shows for users, who have a high chance of being under 18
- neilv 2y agoInteresting. I wouldn't have guessed teens would have the money. I'd have guessed the cash cows would be adult, well-employed. But if it's a common scenario for an adult OF creator to be sexually interacting with an underage teenager online (and, really, "grooming" them), are we going to start seeing life-ruining prosecutions of creators? Incidentally including subpoenas of lists of creators and consumers, for additional chilling effect on both? If so, could that kill OF's business, at least for Western creators, as well as for some consumers? And if OF ends up with creators mostly in non-Western countries, with a reputation for preying upon UK/US/etc. teens (and maybe even reports of human trafficking, and/or funding sanctioned parties), will OF be banned in many Western countries? Maybe the most lucrative ones? Separate from serious questions about what's ethical and healthy for everyone, given that the topic is OF's economics, I wonder whether they're making so much money because they're too close to the line of what's legally sustainable.
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- luizfzs 2y agoI know it is pedantic, but could someone please enlighten me as to where does MM means millions? It's so easy to stick to international units, folks. Please. PLEASE!
- foobarian 2y agoWait until we need to talk about billions!
- quectophoton 2y agoHow to forget one of the holy wars of natural languages, with half the world using it to mean "one million million", and the other half using it to mean "one thousand million". Still less confusing than "mph" (I always read it as "meters per hour" and have to go back to correct myself).
- quectophoton 2y ago> It's so easy to stick to international units, folks. It's not as easy as you might think, given how many places I've seen that measure weight in Kelvin-grams (Kg).
- CryptoBanker 2y agoM is 1,000 in Roman numerals. MM is short for M*M, so 1,000 * 1,000 = 1,000,000 or MM. The M lives on in languages like Spanish where the word mil means one thousand.
- jimbob45 2y agoAs an aside: OnlyFans 80% revenue share rate is practical only because it does not offer App Store-based billing (which would take 15-30% of revenue off the top). In fact, neither iOS App Store nor Google’s Play Store even allow for pornographic apps. Usually, such a ban would destroy a media platforms’ business model, but browser-based experiences are fine for viewing photos and videos and sending messages (in contrast, most games can’t even run). And while apps tend to offer better user experiences and far simpler payment processes, most OnlyFans customers aren’t dissuaded by the need to use a browser, nor the extra hoops involved in manually entering a credit card number (again, this is less true for casual games or ecommerce). IMO the lede is a bit buried within the article. The idea that a non-app could survive this well within the strangling iOS system should come as a revelation to the greater iOS community.
- Animats 2y agoSo this is a VC writing, observing that they have a stable, profitable business model. Creators get 80% of revenue, which is pretty good. It creates a moat - nobody taking a bigger cut is likely to get the desirable talent. Most of the creators don't make much, which is normal for creative industries. Music and books work that way. OnlyFans has only about 42 employees. They didn't hire a bloated staff. That's impressive considering the sheer volume of content that passes through their servers. It looks like OnlyFans has figured out how to do the porno business in a more or less legit way. So what's the problem?
- kragen 2y agoproblem? ball seems to approve, terming it 'stunning', 'probably the most successful uk company founded since deepmind', 'the most significant media platform founded since tiktok', and says that on onlyfans 'creators and pornstars alike can make more money, in a safer way, while having greater autonomy and offering audiences experiences that feel more authentic, differentiated, and valuable' were you replying to someone else making a comment attacking onlyfans?
- idunnoman1222 2y agoreading this thread, I am once again reminded that analogies are bad and that we should stop using them
- 29athrowaway 2y agoMy intuition makes me suspect that some money laundering must be taking place via OnlyFans donations.
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- jean1212 2y ago[flagged]