OnlyFans Is a Billion-Dollar Media Giant Hiding in Plain Sight | Hacker News Reader

OnlyFans Is a Billion-Dollar Media Giant Hiding in Plain Sight

bloomberg.com

22 points1cvmask14 comments

As if spamming URLs on every possible platform, such as Reddit, is “hiding in plain sight,” I suppose this article is correct in its assertion.

I’m all about giving people platforms to do what they want, I just don’t want to see it spammed all over the place.

Well, the problem is that OnlyFans is trying to get ANYTHING "legitimate" before the law comes down on them for the porn.

So, do I understand correctly this OnlyFans site is mostly a site where attractive women can post custom videos of themselves for serious money ?

It’s moving beyond this model a bit as sex work changes to be more mainstream and there becomes a spectrum across which an influencer turns into a sex worker.

The real juice with OF is in transferring the majority of rev share to the creators...unlike other media platforms available.

I think the future will see more content on platforms like OF than YouTube as influencers become brands themselves, don’t need to rely on the platform to bring the viewers, and the content itself is monetized instead of ad supported.

There’s room for shades of OF that are less sex work focused. OF, IMHO, should stick to backing its sex workers. Not trying to make the platform family-friendly. Too much risk in alienating your userbase.

Is there anything about the platform that is inherently pornographic or sex work focused?

Not inherently, but the brand seems well established as a sex brand.

No reason they couldn't just start another brand for mainstream use though.

Or, do the same thing Tinder did:

Get popular, get Conservative banker eyes on you, quickly choose to rebrand as an "everything" platform wink wink so your card processing isn't shut down on moral clauses.

OnlyFans is very similar to Patreon, except used for adult content and the content-creator gets to set the subscription price.

Patreon doesn’t allow the content creator to set their price?

They do, but Patreon is more a subscription thing while, AFAIK, OF is for purchasing things (like BandCamp)

I believe Patreon allows consumers to set how much they would like to pay.

They do, but a creator can set benefit levels. If I give $3/month, I don’t get the $5/month benefits, but I do get the $1/month ones.

For the most part, though you need not be attractive to try.

This article provides a decent background https://medium.com/brand-origins/how-did-onlyfans-start-2355...

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