OnlyFans and Deep Fake Porn – Can We Accept the Former but Condemn the Latter?

Online sexual services, like livestreaming and sexual content creation, are common forms of sex work – yet little is known about the occupational health of workers providing these services. There is a particular need for research with transgender/nonbinary (TNB) online sex workers, who may face distinctive marginalization-related challenges. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 U.S.-based TNB young adults, ages 22–30 years, who had done online sex work. We triangulated interview data through focus groups with 17 participants who were clinicians and/or advocates working with TNB people and/or sex workers. Using thematic analysis, we developed five themes addressing positive dynamics in online sex work: Skill and career development, artistry and craft, social connection, self-exploration, and promoting healthier sexual norms. We also developed six themes addressing stressful dynamics: Sexual stereotypes and market pressures, negative viewer and customer interactions, conflict and exploitation, volatility in engagement and earnings, restrictive rules and opaque enforcement, and sex work stigma. Finally, we developed two themes addressing protective factors: Financial and housing stability and longer-term sex work experience. Results point to the importance of recognizing the diversity of TNB young adults’ online sex work experiences, opposing restrictive laws and policies, and advocating for social safety net programs.

Online sex work refers to sexual services that are provided via the internet for compensation. Views of sex work range from empowering to oppressive. Various frameworks examine the balance between these extremes, but how these viewpoints operate in online sex work is underexplored. We examined the experiences of female and nonbinary online sex workers, using a feminist lens. Zoom interviews were conducted with 15 participants ranging from 18 to 33 years old. We describe results identified through thematic analysis within two groups—participants’ experiences with misogyny and with managing misogyny. We further identified major themes and subthemes within each. Findings were framed using a micro/macro theoretical framework in which experiences with misogyny were complex and involved both individual and structural consideration. Micro or individual factors such as empowerment, validation, and agency operate under larger macro systems such as misogyny, patriarchy, and capitalism. This study expands on current literature, illuminating how empowerment and oppression operate simultaneously in online sex work.

Young college-age women have increasingly been using online sex work as a popular avenue to raise capital. I explored the experiences of women undergraduate students who engage in self-produced sex work online. In particular, this study examines the experiences of college women who turned to the online platform, OnlyFans, a mainstream adult entertainment platform that has allowed many college women to earn an income and fund their university costs, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, by posting explicit pictures and videos onto the OnlyFans platform. This study identifies interpretative narratives used by undergraduate women in the U.S. to make sense of their labor as sex workers within capitalist relations. The goal is to move towards strategies that would combat the capitalist exploitation of online sex work. I conducted this study through online social research methods, collecting fieldnote data and semi-structured interviews of industry participants. The results of the study contribute to contemporary feminist literature and sociological research regarding online sex work. Findings yield that OnlyFans creators understand the platform to be a site of labor exploitation as depicted through their chronicling of the platform’s plans to ban sexually explicit content. Further results of this study yield that college undergraduate students are motivated to create OnlyFans accounts out of economic necessity, compounded by increased hardships during the COVID-19 pandemic and the high costs associated with obtaining a college education in the United States. As part of the digital gig economy, unpaid labor is essential to the success of the OnlyFans platform. Creators perform unpaid labor through tasks involved in the content creation process and account promotion across social media platforms. Additionally, OnlyFans creators utilize both surface-acting and deep-acting aspects of emotional labor during the creation of content and while interacting with subscribers. Finally, the virtual community of OnlyFans creators acts as resistance to exploitation within the digital gig economy.

The rise of the online sex work industry is reshaping how people conceptualise and negotiate sexual encounters across digital and offline spaces. This article analyses content from an online sex work forum (AmberCutie Forum (ACF)) to examine how online sex workers establish boundaries between their online and offline lives to manage competing expectations from their partners and viewers. Our analysis reveals a misogynistic double standard whereby workers are seen to threaten monogamous values, while viewers escape the same level of moral culpability. We argue that the cultural logics of monogamy function to delegitimise the labour involved with online sex work and increase the risk posed to online sex workers through retributive misogyny, including cyber-harassment toward sex workers. This impacts sex workers’ emotional and financial wellbeing and reinforces gendered power relations by prioritising stereotypically masculine pleasure over workers’ economic interests.

Background/Context In India, transgender and non-binary people are legally recognized as a ‘third gender,’ but they still face widespread stigma and barriers to traditional employment and gender-affirming surgeries, resulting in overrepresentation in sex work. While research on sex work in India largely centers on cisgender women, the unique online risks and safety concerns of trans women sex workers remain underexplored—particularly as digital surveillance technologies and the digitalization of the welfare state proliferate. Methodology Drawing on long-term engagement with Samabhabhona, a grassroots transgender rights organization in Kolkata, India, this study uses ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with 18 trans women sex workers, conducted in May 2022, to understand their risk experiences in these digital spaces and reasons for choosing online sex work. Reflexivity and a dialogical approach informed the data collection and analysis. Results The findings indicate that while online sex work is a safer avenue for individuals to earn a living, providing them with greater autonomy and control over their working conditions, which in turn significantly reduces their risk of HIV and STIs, the constant engagement with various digital platforms negatively impacts their mental health. Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis process revealed two broad themes: reasons for choosing online sex work and risks in online sex work. Covid-19 pandemic and reduced risk of violence were two sub-themes identified for reasons for choosing online sex work and six subthemes were identified for risks in online sex work: (1) blurring of personal and professional boundaries; (2) cyberstalking or cyberharassment; (3) non-payment of services; (4) platform banning or blocking; (5) mental fatigue and exhaustion; and (6) persistent fear of digital surveillance. Conclusion Trans women sex workers in Kolkata experience intersecting oppressions—transphobia, whorephobia, homophobia, and more—that are intensified by online platform policies and global legislation such as FOSTA-SESTA. These factors further push already marginalized individuals into unsafe work environments. The findings suggest the need for inclusive digital policies and highlight the crucial advocacy role NGOs can play in safeguarding the rights and promoting the health and safety of trans women sex workers.

(Online) Sex work is a hot topic in feminist literature which is mainly studied with respect to two perspectives towards sex work: oppression and empowerment. This study aims to understand “How online sex work of women on OnlyFans can be interpreted and try to understand if OnlyFans can be explained through the perspectives of victimization and empowerment. For this purpose, this paper will provide a theoretical discussion about two main debates (oppression and empowerment) in the literature; be analyzed by taking OnlyFans as a case. Study results show that women's online sex work experience cannot be explained purely by oppression or empowerment paradigms, instead coexistence of oppression or empowerment should be taken into account. Secondly, emphasizing only the oppression or empowerment paradigm underestimates women’s differences that directly affect women’s online sex work experiences. Thus, intersectional analyses that are taken into women’s age, race, and gender considerations are necessary in order to understand women’s OnlyFans experiences. Last but not least, women’s experiences of online sex work can change according to the motivation behind being a sex worker in OnlyFans.

While online sex work in the form of the creation and sale of pornographic content is not a new phenomenon, the recent prominence of the platform OnlyFans drew additional attention to this sector. This article argues that OnlyFans, and other similar erotic-content platforms, can be understood as forms of platform-mediated gig-economy work, reflecting increased freedoms in some ways, but tempered with heightened financial precarity. Gig-economy work, with its linkages to discourses of entrepreneurialism, is intrinsically linked to neoliberalism, and in the context of online sex work, the division of labour is gendered. Conventional models of pornography production have been critiqued for the way they limit performers’ control over their working conditions, and direct-to-consumer marketing of self-shot footage has been offered as a remedy to this. However, creators are still reliant on third parties in the form of platforms and payment processors. The recent threat that OnlyFans might ban explicit content, displacing the online sex workers who depend on the platform for a living, as well as the demonetization of Pornhub and AVN Stars, highlights the way that online sex work is made vulnerable by existing at the nexus of sex work stigma, and the precarity inherent in platform-mediated gig-economy work.

How can we identify individuals at risk of being drawn into online sex work? The spread of online communication removes transaction costs and enables a greater number of people to be involved in illicit activities, including online sex trade. As a result, social media platforms often work as springboard for criminal careers posing a significant risk to the economy, public health and trust. Detecting deviant behaviors online is limited by the poor availability of ground-truth data and machine learning tools. Unlike prior work which focuses exclusively on either qualitative or quantitative methods, in this paper we combine covert online ethnography with semi-supervised learning methodologies, using data from a popular European adult forum. We obtained risk assessment results of 78 users using covert online ethnography, and set out to build a machine learning model that can predict the risk factor in other 28,832 users. Results show that a combination-based approach in which all features are used yields the most accurate results.

This thesis explores sexual labour on the virtual platform OnlyFans to understand the labour process of sex workers within a gig work platform. This research utilizes interpretive qualitative methods such as interviews and virtual participant watching to understand the experiences of four sex workers who utilize the platform. Employing McDonaldization as a conceptual framework, my thesis argues that labour on OnlyFans is a unique intersection between gig work and voluntary sex work. This thesis addresses the following questions: 1) How has the intersection between gig work and sex work on virtual platforms attracted people to sex work as a form of labour? 2) How does this impact our way of understanding, and regulation of, online sex work? 3) How do sex workers on a gig work platform define the work they do? Three major themes emerged from the data, including an understanding of the labour process on the platform, using the voice of my participants to define the work they are engaging in, and issues experienced with platform-based work. The findings demonstrate that McDonaldized aspects of the platform, such as efficiency with distributing content and predictability through similarities with social media sites, have drawn sex workers and non-sex workers to use OnlyFans as a platform. Further, given the changing nature of societal attitudes and views towards sexual content, participants indicated that they are simply capitalizing on content they would have shared on alternate social media sites. Finally, findings suggest that many aspects of the labour are comparable to that of gig workers on platforms such as Uber, Etsy, or SkipTheDishes. I suggest that certain forms of platform-based sex work require a regulatory framework which differs from current Canadian sex work regulations which criminalize the purchase of sexual labour, and instead, one which recognizes the voluntary and gig-work aspect of the labour.

The erotic camming industry has been around for almost three decades, exponentially growing as technology continues to push the bounds of how sex work is constituted online. The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in unexpected technological and cultural revolutions, with increased innovations, humans becoming more dependent on technology more than ever, and disrupted online and offline operations (Anikin, 2021). The sex industry has irrevocably changed as well, especially online sex workers and adult performers as they experience an economic boom in the midst of the pandemic. This gave grounds to increased online sex work engagement, ranging from the creation of new online sex service sites and digital creators to camming veterans who had been active pre-COVID (Rubattu et al., 2023). Sites like OnlyFans can offer as a curious case study of ushering in exponential economic growth and social change and is worth exploring through critical lenses to complicate and challenge the hegemonic structures that is positioned in and must navigate through. In this piece, I will explore OnlyFans through the lens of neoliberalism, complicating the empowering language of self-made and empowered sex workers while they navigate capitalistic structures and at their expense, exploited for capital gain. Different case studies will be explored showing sex workers being affected by the “Girl Boss” neoliberal and choice feminist rhetoric, critiquing the language that presumably was in place to uplift and empower sex workers to destigmatize sex work (but inversely feed into capitalistic structures). I attempt to pull back the rose-colored glasses that so many sex workers on OnlyFans went in with (the promise of quick, easy, earn-while-you-sleep money along with being your own boss) and critically think about why this language has been prominent in the first place. The language of empowerment within neoliberal feminism, as reflected in this piece, is a quite potent tool for capitalism to be perpetuated, especially within the world of online sex work. No matter how much one is aware of the tendrils of capitalism reaching out in almost every aspect of their lives, they must play the game if they want to operate within the world of online sex work. Capitalism has shown to push workers, especially in marginalized communities, to different lengths to garner income: whether that may be enduring racism and discrimination to retain subscribers, to going through almost harmful lengths in order to stay above the competition, to almost losing oneself because of feeling personal responsibility to respond to the inequalities manifested by capitalism. Neoliberalism thrives hand in hand with capitalism and is part of a symbiotic relationship at the expense of our sex workers. Perhaps our gaslighting, gatekeeping, and girlbossing isn’t as productive as we thought.

It has been well established that those working in the sex industry are at various risks of violence and crime depending on where they sell sex and the environments in which they work. What sociological research has failed to address is how crime and safety have been affected by the dynamic changing nature of sex work given the dominance of the internet and digital technologies, including the development of new markets such as webcamming. This paper reports the most comprehensive findings on the internet-based sex market in the UK demonstrating types of crimes experienced by internet-based sex workers and the strategies of risk management that sex workers adopt, building on our article in the British Journal of Sociology in 2007. We present the concept of 'blended safety repertoires' to explain how sex workers, particularly independent escorts, are using a range of traditional techniques alongside digitally enabled strategies to keep themselves safe. We contribute a deeper understanding of why sex workers who work indoors rarely report crimes to the police, reflecting the dilemmas experienced. Our findings highlight how legal and policy changes which seek to ban online adult services advertising and sex work related content within online spaces would have direct impact on the safety strategies online sex workers employ and would further undermine their safety. These findings occur in a context where aspects of sex work are quasi-criminalized through the brothel keeping legislation. We conclude that the legal and policy failure to recognize sex work as a form of employment, contributes to the stigmatization of sex work and prevents individuals working together. Current UK policy disallows a framework for employment laws and health and safety standards to regulate sex work, leaving sex workers in the shadow economy, their safety at risk in a quasi-legal system. In light of the strong evidence that the internet makes sex work safer, we argue that decriminalisation as a rights based model of regulation is most appropriate.

Although online sex work has become more accessible to people of all socio-economic statuses, labor practices and work safety have not improved since the widespread use of the internet. One way that we can help empower sex workers is to understand their motivations and experiences when using the internet. In a survey conducted by Sanders et al. (2017), the highest crime that 56.2% sex workers experienced was being threatened or harassed through texts, calls, and emails. Because there is no theory application to date on this marginalized group, three theories were proposed. This literature review highlights the need to explore why sex workers, as end-users, should be included in the user cybersecurity defense conversation, such as the cybercrimes that they face, their relationship with law enforcement, and what other factors affect their safety.

This study aims to analyze how online sex work practices through the MiChat application in Jayapura City are socially constructed and related to multidimensional wellbeing. The study employed a qualitative approach with in-depth interviews with three informants purposively selected based on varying socioeconomic backgrounds. Data analysis was conducted thematically, drawing on Berger and Luckmann's social construction theory, encompassing the processes of externalization, objectivation, and internalization. The results indicate that online sex work is not a homogeneous phenomenon, but rather a practice negotiated within the context of structural constraints, such as economic pressure, social stigma, and weak institutional support. This practice serves as a short-term livelihood strategy, but simultaneously reproduces vulnerabilities in economic, social, psychological, spiritual, and health dimensions. Furthermore, the findings suggest that individuals involved are more accurately understood as victim-survivors actively navigating choices within unequal conditions. This study contributes by integrating social construction and multidimensional wellbeing perspectives to understand digital-based informal work in peripheral urban contexts. Policy implications emphasize the importance of inclusive and gender-sensitive structural-based interventions.

Subscription-based digital platforms such as OnlyFans have expanded online sex work globally. Although research has documented their affordances mostly in Western countries with neo-liberal systems, what risks and challenges women experience and navigate on these platforms have not been adequately understood. The present study adopts a critical feminist perspective to address this gap by exploring women online sex workers’ agency and well-being in Türkiye, a conservative and patriarchal gender order that increasingly criminalizes online sex work. Six women who were working or formerly worked on subscription-based digital platforms participated in individual interviews for this study. Thematic analysis of the interviews showed women's efforts to protect their safety and voice within the bounds of possibility in four themes: a) withstanding fear, stigmatization, and objectification, b) pretending in the service of the male gaze, c) exerting digital boundaries, and d) setting priorities. Our findings contribute to previous research by uncovering diverse expressions of women's agency and emotional labor on digital platforms. The findings also pointed to the shaping impact of the Türkiye context in exacerbating this labor due to an insecure political climate and marginalization. We shared recommendations for feminist, empowerment-based research and practices for sex worker women's well-being.

Camming is based on a five-year mixed-methods study of the erotic webcam industry, and tells a pornographic story about the multibillion-dollar online sex industry colloquially called “camming.” Through camming, millions of people from all over the globe have found decent wages, friendship, intimacy, community, empowerment, and pleasure. This deeply rich book is filled with the stories of a diverse sample of cam models from around the world. This book is not a utopian tale. Cam models, like all sex workers, must grapple with exploitation, discrimination, harassment, and stigmatization. Using an intersectional lens, Jones is attentive to how the overlapping systems of neoliberal capitalism, White supremacy, patriarchy, cissexism, heterosexism, and ableism shape all cam models’ experiences in this new global sex industry. This thorough examination of the camming industry provides a unique vantage point from which to understand and theorize around gender, sexuality, race, and labor in a time when workers globally face increasing economic precariousness and worsened forms of alienation, and desperately desire to recapture pleasure in work. Despite the serious issues cam models face, Jones’s focus on pleasure will help people better understand the motivations for engaging in online sex work, as well as the complex social interactions between cam models and customers. In Camming, Jones pioneers an entirely new subfield in sociology—the sociology of pleasure. The sociology of pleasure can provide new insights into the motivation for social behavior and assist sociologists in analyzing social interactions in everyday life.