OnlyFans Paid Chatters Lawsuit | Hacker News Reader

OnlyFans Paid Chatters Lawsuit

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42 pointsharambae43 comments

Throw away account for obvious reasons.

My wife and I run an onlyfans account, a manyvids account and a few other related accounts. I can tell you from extensive networking with other onlyfans creators the number of them using chatters is pretty small, probably less than 1%. I personally have never interacted with someone that uses them. I also run a discord and telegram support server for creators so I interact with a lot, but certainly have not made any kind of scientific measure.

Some higher tier models use agencies to run their stuff and that's usually where the chatters come into play.

The general consensus is to avoid agencies or managers for obvious reasons.

While I personally think it's kind of shady, I very much doubt it's illegal, but ianal. There is one fans platform that I know of that has integrated AI chat bots so shrug

> probably less than 1%

Probably a significant overlap with the 1% of the highest earning creators though, I'd bet.

> Some higher tier models use agencies to run their stuff and that's usually where the chatters come into play.

If this suit is real then I think that's who it's targeting anyway, since that's where the money is.

The whole thing seems spurred on by the WaPo article from November about Bryce and Brian Adams, which opens with their $120,000 driveway and piles on the mentions of how much money they make from there. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/o...

> but ianal

Cheeky.

My anecdotal evidence is the opposite. One couple I know, the male does a lot of the botting for his partner. One of my aging model friends switched from having an OF to running other girls. 3rd model friend use to employ their friend to run around 60% of their operation but the quality suffered a bit and the lost a whale. I recently did a little demo for a friend on how ChatGPT could be used to create Twitter copy for various market types to push OF.

My experience similarly points to partners or paid acquaintances doing a lot of ghost-chatting.

> While I personally think it's kind of shady, I very much doubt it's illegal, but ianal.

If they disclose that the fan interacts with a bot or a random employee its probably legal. Its the fact that they are not disclosing it that smells illegal to me. I do not know if its closer to false advertising or to fraud.

>I can tell you from extensive networking with other onlyfans creators the number of them using chatters is pretty small, probably less than 1%

1. Why would anybody believe you?

2. Why would you believe other "creators"?

3. What is the percentage of customers and/or revenue generated by the 1% of "creators" using Chatters?

For #1 and #2, what reason is there to doubt them? I have a couple of friends doing OF/SW and this isn't incongruent with their experience or what gets discussed in the community. I generally trust what people say in communities of people in the same domain sphere (i.e. discussion on HN about which software platforms are easier or harder to implement).

Most people don't subcontract their job either, even if it could increase their overall income.

The same reason there is to doubt anything a stranger says on the internet. People have egos and sometimes tell lies to inflate their egos.

I generally distrust anything people say in communities that supports some personal cause (ie positive comments about their employer, or negative comments about their enemy, etc)

That didn't really answer my question.

Misanthropic attitudes are not useful or actionable.

Plenty of average models use OF agencies. They're quite prevalent! Maybe your circle is more random people hacking it on their own and doing it as a side gig but they move little money and little followers.

It's a simple model for agencies:

1. Get broke girls to produce photos and videos

2. Post some content to free account

3. Post some more content to paid account

4. Post some teasers on reddit nsfw subreddits

5. Get 3rd worlders as chatters to upsell some of the content

6. Ask girls for the occasional custom request

> Have you ever talked to an OnlyFans model? She's NOT talking to you. It's a team of paid chatters she works with to defraud you.

Like duh.

Maybe it's just my IRC roots showing but why is this a surprise to anyone?

I get it, but "duh" is not a legal defense. If they are saying they are talking to you but you are actually talking to some guy in India, that seems very illegal.

What law is that?

Some sort or variant of misrepresentation of services received I would guess. I assume consumer law would cover it.

Just because the fraud is obvious doesn’t mean it’s not fraud

What’s the fraud? Really?

If I'm paying to talk to Person X, but it's actually Person Y pretending to be X, is that not outright fraud?

What is the difference between popular Instagram accounts? Surely celebrities have media managers who handle day to day fan communication.

People don't pay to talk to media managers.

Well, Twitter Blue exists...

Do those popular Instagram accounts charge you money to send and receive messages, while explicitly claiming that it's the person whose account it is that's reading your messages and sending those responses?

There’s a current scandal at a US university. The University President and his wife had an OF account, and were producing content as a passion project.

I don’t know how common that is.

I expect the people trying to optimize profit are more common, but also switch platform and genre a lot, according to where the money is.

But OF is certainly trying to portray itself as a passion project type place, however dishonest that may be.

Is there a precedent that suggests there must be a reasonable expectation that if you are contacting someone over the internet or phone and giving them money, that person has some duty to ensure their internet/TV/professional/social media etc. persona is the person on the other end of the line? I'm sure many have experienced calling phone support for a product you subscribe for, the associate is "Brian from Wisconsin" but clearly someone in another country. Bit different case as you were not calling "Brian" specifically, but still someone that you are ostensibly paying pretending to be someone else. There were also countless fortune telling/psychic phone lines were clearly Miss Cleo et al. were not fielding the calls, these businesses ran into other legal troubles but was having people essentially play their character on the other end of the line one of them? I assume on Onlyfans creators can assumed to be "characters" to some degree, don't most go by pseudonyms to begin with?

I think there’s precedent for fraud if something is sold as “pay $x for y service” and the vendor accepts $x and then delivers something that looks like y but is not.

The Miss Cleo lines clearly said that you would talk to other psychics and not just Miss Cleo. And of course while psychics are BS, good luck proving that they aren’t actually telling the future.

Some more info about the lawsuit: https://avn.com/business/articles/legal/attorney-wants-to-su... (NSFW warning -- AVN is "Adult Video News")

It's an interesting legal thought experiment. Possible analogy: if I claim that Celebrity Y is going to be at an event, and that people who buy a backstage pass will get to briefly meet Celebrity Y, but Celebrity Y is actually a Celebrity Y impersonator, is that dishonest dealing? False advertising?

They do that with Putin. Works ok, even for the meetings with the heads of other states (except for China or Turkey - these guys get the real deal refusing to settle for the impersonator)

[citation needed]

I understand the logic of that claim for when he's supposedly visiting occupied areas, but why do this when meeting another head of state?

his very bad state of health (while for example the double which went to Mariupol and to Saudi Arabia was in very good shape). The real one would soon or is already dead ("Schrodinger's Putin" - I subscribe for 90% to the theory that he is already dead as for the few recent months I didn't see the real one). The Russian power elite seems to intend to keep the charade going as long as they can, so "socializing" the doubles even at the highest levels makes for the easier transition into the state when the real one isn't available anymore, yet the country would still be led by "Putin" and would even elect him with 85% vote in the coming March elections.

An example of that analogy: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/24/doop-snog...

I think your example is quite clearly fraud; and I think you would get a refund for that. I think the OnlyFans situation is different. I might be wrong - but I don't think you actually pay to message OF creators. I think messaging is free, and you can be upsold through messaging. In that case I think it's like I wrote a letter to the President or Justin Bieber and his assistant wrote me a reply that was signed by him. I think this is common enough already and the assistant has authorization to write on his behalf. If I later buy Justin Bieber's new single and then later found out Justin Bieber didn't personally read my letter, is that fraud?

Furthermore I don't think you can buy time on these platform, only videos. I may be able to see the case where a model said give me $500 and you can call me on the phone, and then the person who picked up worked in a call center - you were directly scammed. But if someone you were messaging, then upsold you a video of the original creator on a dildo - I don't see how you can make the case that what you bought was misrepresented.

Fake celebrity artifacts (like signatures, items, etc.) is a known form of fraud, and AFAIK there were prosecutions on it. I.e. if I sell you a book that is claimed to be signed by celebrity, but in fact it's my own signature, I would definitely be committing fraud. I think impersonations may be argued the same, though proving material harm (beyond the cost of the ticket) would be very hard, and unless the ticket is really expensive or you make it a class action, prosecuting this will be financially infeasible. But if it's done on scale - then yes, as it looks there were successful class actions on lesser grounds than this (not a lawyer and all that stuff, of course, just thinking logically).

Yeah.

There a new online service that lets you get autographed content from celebrities. It shows the celebrities signing the item, and that video is an important part of the service.

Celebrity economics are weird. But authenticity is an important part.

Isn't the implication here that they would be suing OnlyFans, rather than the models? Unless OnlyFans is in on it, don't see how that's doable.

It's interesting to think about how this situation will evolve as "AI girlfriend" software (and underlying ML models) improves. Perhaps along with next generation consumer hardware.

If there is a good chance that any popular "online personality" of that sort will be an AI, then I might as well skip a step and just install my "girlfriend" locally.

Also, systems like Stable Diffusion or other similar models like instant-id can generate imagery of any "personality" for any desired situation at will. I think personalities will have trouble suing everyone who is doing that on their own computer. Or ever knowing how many are doing it.

I think there are actually already somewhat convincing versions of this. At least on a surface level. (Sometimes I suspect that r/localllama could be called r/localwaifu and it would be mostly accurate). Just haven't investigated thoroughly. Could be an interesting weekend project.

I was doing an interview for a project where someone wanted to build a more "empathetic" AI. Not necessarily a girlfriend, maybe more useful (but perhaps not necessarily not a girlfriend). He had someone from BlackRock on the call with him. Which I think was just his buddy from college and that was a coincidence. Probably. But it's hard not to think that sort of thing as being a profitable investment.

They are seeking class representatives for a class action lawsuit.

Or it's a honeypot scam. Class action lawsuits are always on random websites with no security.

The part about blackmailing sounds like hand-waving to me, I also suspect that the whole thing is not genuine.

> We’re investigating the OnlyFans industry and have found widespread questionable practices that could put you at risk of extortion, blackmail, or humiliation.

> We are working to get justice for all subscribers who have been lied to and defrauded. Fill out the form below to learn more. All information is kept strictly confidential.

GIVE US YOUR INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR ACTIVITIES ON A PORN SITE AND WE PROMISES WE'LL DO ONLY GOOD THINGS WITH IT.

I mean, what kind of stupid do you all think we are?

I'm sure they've already gotten a lot of responses. People will be suckered by that little dangle of "potential reward of up to 20k dollars!"

They target the same people who paid good money to chat with some poor guy in Bangladesh believing it's a gorgeous woman, so you tell me how gullible they expect their target audience to be.

These are lawyers who found a cause, they get their cut if they win the case, they see that there is a change of getting settlements from high tier girls and agencies for this. It's pretty obvious what going on.

Why would I expect anything shady, and what would they have to gain or sell from people porn activities? Every other website with a bit of tracking cookies/fingerprinting knows more about your porn use that you could every tell a bunch of lawyers on your own. You make zero sense and think you are smart. That is hilarious.

"I'm paying to be deceived, but not like that!"

- Robert B. Carey probably

This is like getting mad that the Ariel you met in Orlando wasn't the same mermaid as the movie. It's an entertainment business; you're talking to a performer.

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