- cross-posted to:
- technology
- cross-posted to:
- technology
OnlyFans says it empowers content creators, particularly women, to monetize sexually explicit images and videos in a safe online environment. But a Reuters investigation found women who said they had been deceived, drugged, terrorized and sexually enslaved to make money from the site. The findings are based on redacted U.S. police complaints and international court files, lawsuits and interviews with prosecutors, sex-trafficking investigators and women who say they’ve been trafficked.
In one prominent case, influencer Andrew Tate, with millions of followers worldwide on social media, is accused of forcing women in Romania to produce porn for OnlyFans and pocketing the profits. He has denied the charges.
Generating less attention are cases Reuters identified in the U.S., where some women endured weeks or months of alleged sexual slavery in ordinary-looking homes in quiet communities. The victim sometimes was a fiance or girlfriend, abused to pad the household budget, fund a couple’s retirement or cover children’s expenses, according to accounts in police or court files. Reuters is withholding the names of women who say they have been trafficked.
So the question is, how can sites like Onlyfans improve to better prevent exploitation while providing sex workers a platform?
I’ve always believed that sex work in all its forms should be subject to regulation. Amateur pornography was very much touted as the response to corruption and sexual exploitation in the porn industry itself. Ignoring, of course, that women are sexually exploited all the time, most often by people they know personally. The pornography industry was and continues to be a gigantic mechanism by which women suffer sexual exploitation to produce content for which they are unfairly compensated.
Platforms like OnlyFans are difficult to regulate by design. They offload the process of sexual exploitation (which they absolutely know exists and knowingly benefit from) onto private citizens because it allows them to procure many of the same kinds of content as traditional pornography platforms while maintaining a distance from it’s production.
There’s a lot of ways it could be better. Making creators paid employees would be a start, which would subject their employment to the same regulations applying to any other kind of employment. Requiring creators to routinely meet in person with company representatives and have conversations with some kind of financial auditor would help as well. A lot of exploitation, like mentioned in the post, takes the form of financial exploitation. Which is easier to understand and help with if there’s kind of clarity on where money is going.
This would turn OnlyFans into a completely different company. I believe similar things should be done for doordash drivers. The whole concept of a “gig company” is built on worker exploitation. They won’t legally hire their workers because it allows them to function outside the bounds of labor regulation. In the case of OnlyFans it’s just. You know. Partly the sexual abuse of women that they are profiting off of.
Demonizing women for sexually expressing themselves is important in controlling their bodies.
That’s why we won’t legalize sex work. We can’t let them be proud of anything besides sexual servitude to a husband/master.
It’s a control mechanism.
While I obviously do think such platforms should take measures to curb abuse like this, I am also wary of penalizing them for a phenomenon they don’t cause and can’t really control. The sad fact is that sex traffickers are always going to take advantage of platforms like this, no matter how well-meaning said platforms are, and holding them accountable for preventing it risks making said ventures impossible as business ventures. There needs to be a reasonable standard for what we expect from these companies in terms of safeguards against this kind of abuse.
Giving free database access to all law enforcement agencies.
There’s also a problem of 15 year olds being on the platform and right now, cops and feds need to literally subscribe to each account individually. If they had broader access, they could run automated facial recognition to look for people on the missing persons register.
Onlyfans makes it difficult on purpose because they know there’s shady stuff going on imo.