OnlyFans as gig-economy work: a nexus of precarity and stigma

Abstract

ABSTRACT 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.