OnlyFans: Who is Leonid Radvinsky, the elusive owner of a porn empire? | Hacker News Reader

OnlyFans: Who is Leonid Radvinsky, the elusive owner of a porn empire?

bbc.com

70 pointsrntn134 comments

I found this interesting, considering he's born in Odesa

> Born in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, Mr Radvinsky's company donated to the relief effort in Ukraine using cryptocurrency, and the real-terms value of the donation in 2022 came to more than $1.3m, according to CoinDesk.

> The London-registered firm said in August 2023 that pre-tax profits for the period reached $525m, up from $432m the previous year.

$100mm/yr increase and he's put $1.3mm into UA. I hope he's contributing privately...

Also that is a wild amount of revenue when content is created for you and you're just hosting it. I've worked at porn companies (on the tech end, voyeur/webcam companies, practically a self-made video CDN) before and even at our tiny level comparatively they made a small fortune on the labor of the acts but nothing even remotely close to that. Tens of millions maybe. I worked for one that sold for $300mm after 12 years of growth and they're doing beyond that yearly.

UX wise I think OF is pretty terrible. It feels like I'm using 2012 tumblr and I'm not sure I've ever seen it add any new interesting features as long as I've known about it. I always expect them to do some really cool social stuff, kind of replace twitter/x for acts. You still go to a models page and get blank images with no potential preview to know what you're getting unless they allow free subscriptions. It's always a gamble. Just feels performatively sketch.

The most fascinating thing to me about OF is how it's practically normalized having one.

I reckon the network effects are just too strong

Yep, and coincidentally related to your username, economy struggles. The main one I worked at was a mansion by University of Tampa that someone bought and we put cameras around it and women/men "worked" in it. They got free room and board and college tuition at UT paid for. This was 20 years ago.

But none of these acts ever thought/expected to become millionaires like what happens on OF. It's wild. It was mostly apposite to dancing and a lot of them were dancers when not in school.

Not many on OF actually become millionaires either. The chance of that is just as rare as in regular life.

No kidding.

OF network effects don’t seem that strong to me. I am not a user but I see a lot of TikTokers directing people to OF and assuming this is how they derive their viewership, those performers could just direct the potential client to a different platform. Unless I am mistaken, OF doesn’t have discovery features or other features that would be the source of stickiness to the platform. Isn’t it essentially just a webhost with payment system?

I don't really know much about it but OF has this right side "menu" of suggested people to watch. But I've never figured out how they related to anyone else I've watched. Most of the organic network-growing that I see on OF is one model/act will tag their friend/business partner in a post. It's kind of amazing to me how little effort they've put in to building that part of the site up because that would drum up so much more sticky (viewing not fluids) activity and keep people on the site longer.

> The most fascinating thing to me about OF is how it's practically normalized having one.

Onlyfans rose to fame during covid - a lot of people stuck at home with ample time to make or view porn. They were for a time pretty much the only opportunity that allowed the creators to make money (Reddit and Twitter didn't) other than Pornhub, which on top of that was dealing with the GirlsDoPorn fallout and ManyVids which while solid hasn't ever been good at marketing... and content creators loved that OF was the first site that more or less lured the viewers into subscription, resulting in a fixed revenue stream - loads of people forgot that they've subscribed to a couple OF people and no one really bothers with ten bucks on the monthly CC bill.

On top of that came a few celebrities/starlets and media pieces, the rest was watching a meme unfold in real life.

> The most fascinating thing to me about OF is how it's practically normalized having one.

I don’t know any personal acquaintance or any celebrity that has one. Perhaps I do but I’m not aware; my point is, it’s not that normalized, at least in my circle.

It's the butt of many jokes and a sign of desperation amongst my various circles. I don't think the service is empowering or pushing the industry forward, just another SaaS "pimp" creating more avenues of exploitation.

Legalize the wide umbrella of sex-related work and stop the exploitation.

I am confused by your argument.

Is OF exploitation in your view? If so, how?

If sex-related work was legalized (as OF is), would you think OF would no longer be the butt of jokes or do you think performers on OF would then turn to newly legalized sex acts?

The platforms get to charge insane amounts of money and control the audience. Creators have no chance of building a legitimate brand, their only hope is to play the algorithm game and pump out content that the platform controls.

IMO, legalizing it would let creators own their brand, get rid of exploitative race-to-the-bottom content, and give buyers/sellers confidence/acceptance to pursue their needs in a regulated and safe way.

I'm not so sure. Youtube is more mainstream but creators are still subject to arbitrary rules, summary judgements, and are forced to play the algorithm game if they want to derive income from the platform.

I agree that the stigmatization of sex work is a major driver of exploitation, but big tech is getting pretty good at the exploitation game itself.

>IMO, legalizing it would let creators own their brand, get rid of exploitative race-to-the-bottom content, and give buyers/sellers confidence/acceptance to pursue their needs in a regulated and safe way.

I'm all for legalization, but I think this idea of "giving power to self hosted content" will go as well as pretty much any other blog site that's been replaced by tumblr, medium, wordpress, or ugh... Twitter. Yes, people would rather type out rants 300 characters at a time over 20 posts than use a proper word processing unit.

Anyways, legalization won't solve the algorithm race. We're still dealing with those issues even on sites that ban 18+ content.

When you guys are talking about legalization in the context of OF, what are you talking about? What’s illegal about the site now, and where is it illegal?

This thread is a great example of why not to talk about sex on HN. It can only go down from there.

> Creators have no chance of building a legitimate brand

This sentence is only correct if you affix [on the platform] to the end. There is nothing stopping these creators from creating their own websites and using TikTok and Instagram to market themselves in much the same way they do now, directing viewers to their own website rather than OF.

I don’t think the algorithm game is the driving force of viewership. I think it is the content creators “advertising” via TikTok and Instagram followings.

Honestly it seems OF has the least platform control of most “social” sites.

>I don’t know any personal acquaintance or any celebrity that has one. Perhaps I do but I’m not aware

I guess that's another allure for it: OF isn't really indexed, so it creates some privacy and security despite being a public website to link to. Very easy to have a 2nd twitter which links to OF and have your peers be none the wiser.

Wasn't the big problem for many porn sites to get paid? The main payment service providers didn't want to deal with them (for many reasons including chargebacks) so they had to use shady providers that charged 15-20% of revenue.

Everyone wound up having to use CCbill so CCbill ran an iron fist and you couldn't argue with them at all. The guy who paid me was an absolute POS with drug/alch, anger and other issues. He's been arrested many times. So yeah, you were lucky to be paid reliably. He'd come in and fire half/all of the staff (acts and tech people) and offer us thousands of dollars to show up the next day. I was young and abuse-vulnerable at that time. It was the most money I'd made ever at that point. Same with a lot of the acts. A lot of us just dealt with it.

It is not normalized to the extent you think it is, because like most trends it is overblown by social media, gaining more of a focus there and less in real life. However, this has still distorted reality enough that now young men ask young women if they have onlyfans, as if that is a casual or normal thing to ask someone.

> It is not normalized to the extent you think it is

I live in the middle of the biggest bar/club neighborhood in a major (usa) city. I meet men and women with OFs at least weekly. It's nothing at all like it was back in the 2005-2010s when I worked in the porn industry. People don't hide it at all. I have Tinder dates that admit to being on OF openly. Even men and women who work at (strip) clubs are way, way more common nowadays. I have a lot of service industry friends and about 1/4 of them have worked at local clubs if not danced at them.

Like, who even are you to say this to me? Lol I worked IN the industry. Are you also in the industry? Are you a dad with 3 kids or something? I have NO idea what your frame of reference is here but it is the absolute opposite of mine. Nothing wrong with that but unless you're more familiar with the industry than I am I'm failing to see why you even commented. But hell, maybe you're Ron Jeremy.

Anecdote is not statistics. If you work in the porn industry, it’s more likely that you’re meeting people who share similar tastes…not a representative view of the general public.

I said 2005-2010. No shit. I literally said "worked IN," I don't work in the industry anymore but I still associate with service industry (bars/clubs) people. Far beyond what the usual hackernews person would.

Hackernews peeps coming in with their hot-takes completely irrelevant to the conversation because they can't follow threads. So embarassing.

No shit some javascript dad with 3 kids probably won't be meeting people with OFs. That's the entire point of my question. But they also shouldn't be commenting on a porn industry thread like they know anything. And sure as HELL shouldn't be telling someone FROM the industry about the industry. Show your creds, homie, explain why I should just listen to you. Herpaderp "anecdata isnt statistics" thanks Gallileo. You know you're on HN and not instagram right? Like, I know math, and programming?

Calm down champ, no one cares about your porn industry experience. "Not normalized" means not normalized in society at large.

you're just aruging past each other without defining "normalization". Some people would say Video games are normalized, while some still think people make fun of adults who play them. We'd need a proper lens before we start arguing if something meets the criteria.

It doesn't need to be defined at the outset, you can infer from the context. Claiming that something has not been "normalized" to the extent depicted, and responding "yes it has! In my small niche community!" is irrelevant. Small niche community is not society at large.

Again, we have to define "niche". Are video games only popular in a "small niche community"? Is being more popular on a website more normalized than being more popular in a traditional club?

The original rebuttal was that it was normalized in the porn and stripper community, yes that is a niche.

The original rebuttal asked for a source and the source was a personal experience. Thar doesn't mean it's the only area, nor does it prove/disprove it as a niche.

I saw an Onlyfans QR code at a gas station, I think it may be less niche than people give it credit for. It's just that westrn society, as usual, does a good job suppressing knowledge in the topic. so many circles are underground.

It just feels werid calling a multi billion dollar empire "a niche".

However I think we all agree that playing video games are significantly more normalized than having an OF account.

Not necessarily. Less stigmatized, sure. It's like how watching porn is normalized but no one talks about it in public. Especially in countries where it may not be fully legal to ("lewd conduct").

>I live in the middle of the biggest bar/club neighborhood in a major (usa) city

This is the modern-day equivalent of Sodom or Weimar. Most of the world, or even the West, is not nearly this far gone.

I don't know about Sodom... but the level of decadence in the Weimar republic was possibly over exaggerated a bit by the you know who.

Besides the widespread poverty and sexual exploitation (which was a pretty common thing in most places back in the day) I doubt even Berlin was that much more 'decadent' than many places in the west are now.

Even homosexuality remained illegal in Germany during the 20s (unlike in France or Belgium for instance) and since about 500-1000 men were still convicted per year being too public about it probably wasn't the best idea.

It might appear normalized in the bar and club area of a huge city. This gives a culturally specific context to where and when people would advertise or talk about onlyfans.

In my frame of reference you are too familiar with the industry to see how normalized it actually is for most people.

Wouldn’t you assume a high level of psychopathy is required to be a successful pornography producer?

If you’re going to throw out an open leading question like that, maybe you could give a good reason why you are asking it?

Lots of ethical sex positive people would be happy to be owners of a fabulously profitable site for ethical sex positive creation and views.

And most people are practical enough to know that the ethical side will take a lot of work to maintain those boundaries. Ethics require work anywhere people socialize.

I don’t see how psychopathy is somehow a necessity for a porn related business.

It's possible to be sex positive without being positive on prostitution or porn.

prostitution, maybe. But porn? This just sounds like "Sex is good, but don't show it to anyone but people you care about". "Porn" as itself is such a general term that it can really mean anything involving exposed genitals.

Either way, I feel "sex positive" means being able to respect differences. So it feels weird to call oneself that but also feel that consenting adults cannot exchange money to have sex, even if you never personally want to deal with that.

> This just sounds like "Sex is good, but don't show it to anyone but people you care about".

Yeah, that's "just" the way it's been for most societies in history.

> Either way, I feel "sex positive" means being able to respect differences.

"sex positive" actually means "pro-prostitution, pro-porn, anti-tradition and anti traditional morality", couched in terms that try to cast a better light on it and to cast people who object to it as joyless prudes. It's a political term.

>for most societies in history.

western ones, yes. And all the territories the west took over.

>It's a political term

In the same way anything slightly controversial is political, sure. No more political than "anti traditional morality", as if that's such a term to inspire awe.

> western ones, yes. And all the territories the west took over.

Which moral system is better than the Christian one?

> In the same way anything slightly controversial is political, sure.

Is that what making up euphemisms to redirect and confuse the public is?

>Which moral system is better than the Christian one

I can't really say. All I can say is that the Christian moral system didn't simply win over other societies through its moral value alone

>Is that what making up euphemisms to redirect and confuse the public is?

I guess you can spin any kind of PR that way, sure. The Civil Rights movement, the multiple sexual awakenings, the KKK, Christianity, and Super Mario Bros. All make up some kind of PR for some purpose.

(and no I hope you don't read too much into that. I hope using Mario and the KKK in the same sentence clues you into this being how general of terms we're speaking).

> "sex positive" actually means "pro-prostitution, pro-porn, anti-tradition and anti traditional morality", couched in terms that try to cast a better light on it and to cast people who object to it as joyless prudes. It's a political term.

No it isn't inherently either politically loaded or a euphemism or proxy for any particular platform, no more than 'liberal', 'conservative', 'libertarian', 'family', 'hard-working'. It merely means regarding sex and sexual expression as good and healthy. But there is no shortage of groups who want to coopt it to their political views, just like the other labels mentioned. Defining a term by not affirmatively defining what it means, but in terms of which policy platforms or bag a group opposes, is a pretty clear sign when it's being hijacked or coopted by an interest group.

> > This just sounds like "Sex is good, but don't show it to anyone but people you care about". > Yeah, that's "just" the way it's been for most societies in history.

Yes, and that only means that technology did not exist until now to simultaneously handle micropayments, security, anonymity, customer acquisition, billing, subscriptions. We could say the exact same thing about most SaaS business models.

The thrust of your comment is "What longer-term implications do current evolusions in modes of male-female interaction, online app-based dating, online porn, the monetization of male attention, etc. have for society, sexuality, psychology, morality, relationships, marriage etc.", which is very much an active discussion. Chris Williamson ('Modern Wisdom' [0]) and Dr Alok Kanojia ('HealthyGamerGG' [1]) are two excellent podcasters who interview a range of experts covering this and other areas regularly. Sample them and tell us what you think.

Akin to what you mention, another historical relationship trend that was just the way it's been for most societies in history for thousands of years, but is currently changing, is the increase in voluntary childlessness. Clearly there are a lot of enormous trends changing, with major societal implications. As you allude to, there isn't much neutral, fact-based research or discourse on these trends.

And the next one will be when AI displaces humans in online sex work; humans using AIs (Replika, et al) as boyfriends/girlfriends.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisWillx

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClHVl2N3jPEbkNJVx-ItQIQ

>You still go to a models page and get blank images with no potential preview to know what you're getting unless they allow free subscriptions. It's always a gamble. Just feels performatively sketch.

Yeah, that's why I prefer Fansly if I can help it, unless the model has other social media with proper "previews" of their work. Fansly can still do that, but AFAIK it's not the default behavior. Or at least, the canonical method is so ubiquitous that it feels like the default.

But I guess I'm not too surprised. The genius thing models do that no other website gets away with is having 2-3 tiers of funding. So it's normal to not only pay for a subscription to see anything, you constantly pay to see even more individual content. It's not uncommon for a model to charge $13/month for a sub and then charge $10 for what could be a single picture (one that may not necessarily be different from what you could find on Instagram, mind you).

And that's not even talking about how you can post "fundraisers" or other misc. kinds of money raising on those sites.

And I guess the demand there was enough to succeed. Takes the best of both worlds of premium sites and webcam tipping and requires less effort than either of them for a single model to be successful.

I wonder if that's a reflection of how frustrated the current youth are in their (lack of?) sexual escapades? pumping out a sub and per post money's to see what could be as tame as an instagram feed, but at least they message you "directly".

OnlyFans is at his core a tech company, with (I'd guess) a stack that looks a lot like any other high volume social media platform. They likely have a decent size engineering group.

Yet all of what I would think of as the expected recruitment links (e.g. https://careers.onlyfans.com/) go nowhere. Quick searches on LinkedIn, Indeed and CrunchBoard come up empty.

Obviously, this is due to their content. But I wonder, how does a company like this recruit good (or at least decent) talent?

> wow does a company like this recruit good (or at least decent) talent?

Not everyone finds it objectionable, many people don't share prudish views that seem to dominate Chirtian America.

I don't doubt that. But how do they find candidates? And how do interested engineers find positions?

Someone else commented above about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37287011

I dont think "Chirtian" is a word.

Sex work often involves a lot of drug addicts and negative outcomes for all involved. Those who advocate for it are often not telling their whole story.

[...] often involves a lot of drug addicts and negative outcomes for all involved.

Sounds more like politics to me :-).

The negative outcomes are mainly due to societal stigmatization. Which explains the 'not telling the whole story' pretty well too. It's not exactly great dinner conversation.

Drug addiction is not really something that's compatible with adult performing. I'm sure it would correlate with some type of sex work (the cheapest 'street corner trick-turning' comes to mind) but those are not the type of people you'll find on OnlyFans.

I wouldn't be surprised if you find more drug addicts in a high-speed trading floor than the average OnlyFans performer population.

Ps I'm not advocating it as a career option but I know some people are drawn to it and genuinely like it. Reddit is/was full of people doing it for free and I don't think it's a bad idea to try to make a job out of it for those people.

> The negative outcomes are mainly due to societal stigmatization

disagree - ordinary citizens often do not get to see the inpatient room at rehab clinics, emergency rooms and court hearings. The fun ends pretty quickly for a lot of people. not making this up "real"

Are we talking about sex workers or the "War on Drugs"? It's very much established that society and even the government can make certain stereotypes and stigmas stick if they want it to.

see you in the rehab center

honestly, no one suggested "make self-harm illegal" here you added that. People can do vice all day and more importantly all night. After you have seen the results a few (dozen) times you might change your mind. Meanwhile, lots of people with active substance abuse habits will chime in quickly about how wrong it is to criticize substance abuse habits.

I just don't understand how sex work (and especially video sex work) equates to drug abuse.

I know many OnlyFans performers and only one of them has a drug problem (and had this already before she turned to OnlyFans). She's also not very popular because it's pretty clear that she has this problem. That's why it's such a bad combo. The successful ones (well, successful as in they make a few hundred bucks a month because it's not a goldmine) make much higher quality and have a normal day job / life.

Like I said some sex work does really correlate with drug abuse but it's really the lowest-quality street prostitution, girls that turn tricks for a few bucks to pay for their drug habit. They won't be popular on OnlyFans because they simply look awful. It's terrible but the sex work is a result of their drug abuse, not the other way around. The same with the petty theft surrounding drug abusers.

yes OK .. so now we rediscover "Hollywood"

> The negative outcomes are mainly due to societal stigmatization. Which explains the 'not telling the whole story' pretty well too. It's not exactly great dinner conversation.

Source please?

> Ps I'm not advocating it as a career option but I know some people are drawn to it and genuinely like it. Reddit is/was full of people doing it for free and I don't think it's a bad idea to try to make a job out of it for those people.

This content, free or not is a net negative on society.

source on why you don't talk about porn at the dinner table? I don't know, there may be some societal etiquette handbook somewhere.

But for the first part, it's a psychological phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity

specifically the Barnsenian form: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/22415/

>This content, free or not is a net negative on society.

Ehh, Reddit isn't THAT bad. Not compared to Twitter or Facebook, at least.

Well the people I generally meet would talk about porn at the dinner table when we go out and many of them publish on OnlyFans too lol :P I also often repair sex toys for my friends.

But I wouldn't imagine this to be a popular topic when meeting up with the in-laws that's all.

The same is true of lots of kinds of work: finance, healthcare, foodservice, retail, construction... (Especially construction.) The common thread is income inequality and poor protection for workers, not sex.

What is "it" exactly? Luring users into the pit of addiction, destroying whatever little will they still have?

You mean the same way alcohol, drugs, sugar, gambling, cheap credit etc. are marketed?

Prettu much. OF belongs to this list.

Programming the front end for an adult website is not that much different from any other web development. You will never even watch much "content" at work despite the product you're working on.

I'm sure you can comment about the actors, but given that OF is simply a hosting platform, I assume the GP was talking about hiring developers.

Not everyone who finds it objectionable is prudish or an American "Chirtian".

I personally find it deeply harmful and a net negative on society and I'm neither of those things.

Hey, know a couple folks working in adult companies including the big one like Pornhub,Xhamsters, xxx.com. They mostly employed through a proxy IT shop that from the first glance has nothing to do with adult technology. Also AFAIK you're not allowed to state in your CV the name of the product you have been working on.

>They mostly employed through a proxy IT shop that from the first glance has nothing to do with adult technology.

aka Geekmind

Mindgeek

Which is on the verge of being renamed to Aylo: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/18/23837670/pornhub-parent-c...

Interesting, hadn't seen that the CEO stepped down. Rebranding after acquisition to distance themselves a bit from him is a reasonable move. The guy was shady as fuck. Though, the company has a reputation for being a sweatshop in the engineering and video editing departments. I don't thing a rebrand or private equity is going fix that any time soon.

I'd be interested to learn more about that, how does that work? Are they subcontractors? Hired directly through that shop? Is that shop owned by outside people or does the tendrils of whoever owns those sites extend there? Such a fascinating, underground world that doesn't see much light.

Imagine working in an outstaffing company like EPAM or Cognizant, but you only work for a single client. The shop is not owned by outside people and has little interest in having more than one customer.

Come to Cyprus one day, you will get a flavor of undergrad tech of all kinds – gambling, adult tech, betting, etc. All these guys are legally operating in the dark mode and sitting on a ton cash of money without VC support.

> 'flavor of undergrad tech'

'underground'! Very Freudian slip...

I think, to a large extent, they don't attract decent talent. The sites are barely functional from a monetization POV.

OF, for example, leaves stacks of money on the table by not having a functioning recommender engine. OF artists are almost always discovered and promoted on platforms like Twitter, which DO have finely tuned recommender systems, but it seems like such an inefficient way of going about things.

They don't. I worked for kink for 4 years. Before I was hired, they had a guy who wrote terrible PHP code and the site was a mess. We spend a bunch of time rewriting everything from scratch and rebuilding everything in the IT department. We also had a really hard time hiring good people.

After I left, they made a bunch of new hires that completely destroyed all the good work we did, because they didn't understand it.

For example, kink used a lot of top level domains and wanted to have a single login for their customers across all domains. We built a whole SSO implementation, that while complicated, solved the problem amazingly well. Log into any site and you're magically logged into all of them, without needing a server side tracking solution. Well, the new team didn't understand it at all (despite it being well documented), and broke all of it.

The high dividend is interesting. Maybe being a porn company it is harder for to flip it to a FAANG or IPO so you might as well just get the cash out. When the next brrr happens he could borrow a few billion and pay that out as a dividend then sell the company on.

I find it quite sad we have managed to capitalize on parasocial relationships (not onlyfans only)

This is simply a digitized for of what was centuries, even millenia, of worship to "important people". athletes, celebrities, rulers, tycoons, etc. The only difference is that the internet lets you form very small, very local parasocial relationships now. What had to be boosted by cable TV or radio decades before can be some tiny "channel" with 20 members directly talking to the "celebrity".

Now http://cummuniti.co has launch I feel his chunk is going to shrink dramatically! He won't be able to compete with crypto, Apple & Google pay with anonymity for fans!

Crazy that they once tried to ban porn on the platform.

Why can’t we just leave people who want to be left alone… alone?

Clearly he wants to remain anonymous so let’s write a detailed article on everything we know about him.

The thing is, sex work and porn is already filled with exploitation and grift. Taking a 20% cut for a bit of hosting and payment processing work is pretty greedy. Not as greedy as your everyday street pimp, but still: it's almost always men who profit off of sex work without doing much in return.

Rofl what a bad take. “For a bit of hosting and payment processing”. Isn’t that 99% of the internet?

And the last sentence is so edgy… Doing what in return, Onlyfans literally gave more money to people in porn than ever in history, isn’t that enough?

> Onlyfans literally gave more money to people in porn than ever in history

The viewers gave the money to the content creators. And just because OF's cut is smaller than in "regular" porn, it's still a rip-off IMO.

Isn't 20% is lower than Apple Store's cut? Imo it seems than compared to industry standard it's more than fair. Youtube and Twitch's cuts are higher.

> Taking a 20% cut for a bit of hosting and payment processing work is pretty greedy

What would be a reasonable cut? Looking at other content platforms, this doesn't really seem out of line: https://www.theverge.com/21445923/platform-fees-apps-games-b...

Apple can take 20% because they enjoy a monopoly on their platform, which is why everyone but Apple wants to get rid of that and force Apple to compete.

Onlyfans isn't much better, their market share is insane. Yes, there are other platforms like Fansly and Manyvids, but they are small in comparison.

You didn't answer the question.

You are discriminating based on sex, that's all.

I bet OnlyFans pays more taxes than other companies 10x it's size, to remove a possible avenue of attack in the media. It's probably a net benefit to society based on that alone.

Well then the content creators can just set up their own site, register a domain, set up a video stream service, payment processor, etc. After all, it's not much.

Chaterbate's cut is 50%. eBay's commission is up to 15%, depending on the category, and then there are PayPal fees on top of that. OF's 20% doesn't seem so unreasonable.

>it's almost always men who profit off of sex work without doing much in return.

You can remove the word sex from that sentence and it remains true.

So is alcohol, cigarettes, cheap credit, factory work, cheap fashion, gambling etc. etc. etc.

Yeah let’s protest people who make money on sexual exploitation of other people

OnlyFans has a very strong connotation with porn but it’s just a paywall.

> Porn empire

> pornography mogul

> linked to the pornography industry

And then, oh, turns out OnlyFans isn’t all about porn.

> Under Mr Radvinsky's ownership, OnlyFans has flourished. It is no longer solely associated with pornography and some of its biggest creators only post safe-for-work content.

With articles likely this (a lot of mentions of porn, a lot of questions followed by “we don’t know”) even from the BBC, no wonder the guy values his privacy.

> And then, oh, turns out OnlyFans isn’t all about porn.

Don't kid yourself. It's the thinnest possible deniability, like selling coca cola in sex shop and telling it's not all about porn.

Admittedly, I'm being a bit pedantic, but that's not quite right. OnlyFans does content-oriented subscription. Porn producers flocked to it because it didn't care whether you wanted to generate porn or other content, but that doesn't make it the equivalent of a "sex shop." It's more like a pawn shop that only ever sees people pawning their jewelry. Just because 99% of the stuff they have for sale doesn't make it a jewelry shop.

Otherwise I totally agree, OF is synonymous with porn, full stop. It's a wonder they haven't been hit with the same restriction from credit card companies as sites like PornHub.

Haha yeah this was the jaw dropping part back when OF (temporarily) suspended porn and claimed they would change course and make OF more about getting private sessions with Gordon Ramsay types.

Like, no, dude. For better or worse, OF has been permanently cemented in the public mind as being about cam girls and porn. No way are mainstream celebrities putting their brand within a hundred miles of that.

This article is just a submarine trying to create the impression that his desired branding has already been accomplished.

You can easily get kicked off many sites without showing anything more extreme than gets put up in fine art galleries. Calling it all porn is often missing the intent.

That said, porn tends to out compete other options on a platform. So if you allow porn you’re going to get a lot of porn and porn like content.

I was just summarizing the quote that followed, also taken from the article:

> Under Mr Radvinsky's ownership, OnlyFans has flourished. It is no longer solely associated with pornography and some of its biggest creators only post safe-for-work content.

that's always the language used when there's reporting about sex work. Onlyfans is essentially Patreon for sex workers and it's hilarious how reporting almost always frames that as an accusation.

For creators in that industry the internet really has enabled independence for the first time, the actual sex industry moguls live in the offline world.

An only-fans style system where the content is locked offers more privacy to the artists than a public porn website. There is nothing morally wrong with the world’s oldest profession and its various tentacles, provided everyone is of sound mind and consenting. I don’t pretend we can stop sex work if we can’t even prevent narcotics from being sold inside supermax prisons. The demand is too high.

"and its various tentacles" --- in some cases, literally.

Modern age pimp.

I guess "pimphouse" was among the options to name the company.

The man that can see all the content in there for free.

Is this the guy Patrick Stewart was writing his screenplay about?!

That scene (Extras S1E6) is top 20 comedic scenes of all time.

Agreed, great scene. Though why is it women I've showed it too aren't typically tickled by it? o_O

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Fg_cwI1Xj4M

Because they've already seen everything?

I've hosted similar sites, on a much smaller scale, it gets boring real quick. It's just a job.

Agreed. As a college student I sold hot dogs, one of the "perks" being as many dogs as you can eat, free. Being a poor student, you can imagine what my diet was.

I've probably eaten two in the 25 years since then.

Yes, looking at people's private porn is just like eating too many hot dogs. I imagine...

along with a thousand forgotten 'testing' accounts , and however many blackhats have figured things out -- sure.

Speaking of the content, it's nearly completely hollow. If we were to apply a 2D DFT to all the images, then find a "porn" basis in which the images are represented in the most compact form, we'd find out that an average image has only a few bits of novel information.

Maybe he can train a generative AI model on all the highest rated porn, creating some ultimate form of content that people will be willing to trade for their entire income.

Sounds a little like Stable Diffusion.

I always find it fascinating how some sites or companies with huge global impacts get away with secretive directors from some Elbonia-adjacent country. But considering how frequent human trafficking is in pornography, I'd probably keep my life as secret as possible as well.

> Elbonia-adjacent country

This guy has been living in US pretty much entire life.

It’s a Dilbert reference, I presume intentional

https://dilbert.fandom.com/wiki/Elbonia

I know, but it's wrongly applied.

Your comment comes across as xenophobic.

How so?

I'd say more ignorant. Isn't he from Ukraine? Is that a country that's not commonly known?

Ukraine has actually long been a center of human trafficking and the more unsavory types of pornography. For a while I believe they were actually one of the biggest producers and exporters of CSAM. For example: the arrest of Maksym Shynkarenko was described as the “most successful child pornography investigation in U.S. history” by the government. And before the war really kicked off they were really starting to gain a reputation for sex tourism.

As of the latest 2023 report from the US Gov, “The Government of Ukraine does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking”.

This is particularly concerning:

“Authorities prosecuted and convicted fewer traffickers, and most convicted traffickers avoided imprisonment… for the sixth consecutive year the government did not secure any convictions of complicit officials.”

Six years. They’ve let corrupt officials traffic humans with impunity for six years.

https://www.state.gov/reports/2023-trafficking-in-persons-re...

> As of the latest 2023 report from the US Gov, “The Government of Ukraine does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking”.

Notably that puts them in the same category as Ireland, Japan, Norway, and Greece on this report. The list of "tier 1" countries is pretty short, much of the world is in "tier 2" with Ukraine.

Yes, but at the same time, I doubt that any of those countries would be able to lay claim to such dubious achievements as “allowing corrupt politicians to sell their people into sex slavery without fear”.

>, I doubt that any of those countries would be able to lay claim to such dubious achievements as “allowing corrupt politicians to sell their people into sex slavery without fear”.

I don't know, I see India, Kenya, and Brazil on that list. It's not exactly ironclad.

Besides, all we're arguing here is what has worse PR, not who actually has the worst problems. Tier 2 criteria literally includes "making active efforts to become Tier 1".

For reference to these "tiers":

Tier 1- Countries whose governments fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking.

Tier 2 - Countries whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards.

Tier 2 Watch List - Countries whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance with those standards, and for which:

    - the estimated number of victims of severe forms of trafficking is very significant or is significantly increasing and the country is not taking proportional concrete actions; or
    - there is a failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons from the previous year, including increased investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of trafficking crimes, increased assistance to victims, and decreasing evidence of complicity in severe forms of trafficking by government officials.

Tier 3 - Countries whose governments do not fully meet the TVPA’s minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.

Any citations that don’t come from anti-porn groups?

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