OnlyFans' porn juggernaut fueled by a deception
reuters.com
reuters.com
I know a developer who wrote the software for an SMS call center about 2 decades ago - it would keep a log of all texts sent, so any agent could pretend to be any of the completely fake profiles of women looking for a relationship.
At 1-2€ per SMS, this was a quite profitable business for the call center, the dev and the telcos, who took about 50% and had no interest in shutting this down.
[1] New York Times: A Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled – https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/technology/bing-chatbot-m...
How? It'll deny any conversation even with the smallest hint of adult content.
There are multiple services offering "virtual girlfriends" etc for a monthly fee.
Also it's mentioned at the end of the article (where the background is dark): AI bots talk dirty so OnlyFans stars don’t have to
"we really want to get to a place where we can enable NSFW stuff (e.g. text erotica, gore) for your personal use in most cases but not do stuff like make deepfakes."
- Sam Altman
https://old.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1coumbd/rchatgpt_i...
I’m having a hard time forming an opinion on this. Yeah I guess he kinda got scammed, and it’s definitely exploiting lonely people, but also… trying to establish a relationship with a porn star? Getting a tattoo of her birthday?
Guy has an insanely serious lack of self control. Like a degenerate gambler.
Exactly. Most countries try to protect their citizens from stuff like the most harmful of drugs, gambling and fraud. Should be easy to find out what's right.
OnlyFans gets multiple billions of revenue, which only represent 20%. So customers on OF, a single platform, easily spend tens of billions.
>lack of self control
Not quite "been there, done that", but anecdotally being lonely/alone accelerates and reinforces any "mental illness"-ish behavior. "Eating your own dogfood" type of thing, but in a bad way - it's a positive feedback loop, probably with combination of feeling guilt, inferior, being ashamed, not wanting to admit you messed up, and so on.
What I'm saying is - could be you, or me, or anyone else really. If the psyop is good enough and there isn't an external support structure to provide a "reality check", it's actually fairly easy to fall into this rabbit hole.
Don't regulate: get Fraud industry + OnlyFans
Regulate: only get OnlyFans.
This company gives nothing back to society except misery and addiction.
Also, other drugs have "been a part of generations", e.g., "Coca leaves have been used by Andean civilizations since ancient times"
There are some basic human urges you can't suppress by banning them - religions have tried for a few thousand years, and they can't keep even their _priests_ in check, never mind the regular believers.
Should sex work be regulated? Definitely.
Can it be banned? No.
This solution basically means law-abiding citizens who suffer from mental or physical conditions that make it virtually impossible to find a voluntary, willing sex partner are going to be cut off from being able to enjoy sexual pleasures for their whole lives. I suppose that this (and the fact of knowing this) may cause their condition to worsen significantly.
In practice, those who can just go to Germany or the Netherlands to use a legal prostitute, or Thailand (for example) if they want a long term partner.
Those who can't are left to their own devices. Unfortunately, comparing figures about sexual crime between countries is notoriously difficult, so it's not possible to make a clearcut case for whether that impacts , but it's not hard to imagine there may be a correlation.
Anyway, I wonder how the Swedish system sees Onlyfans. Does it consider the men who are buying these services from the "vulnerable models" the bad guys in this story? Should they be punished? Do they believe only vulnerable women are on Onlyfans, and that most of them probably were forced into it by some bad men? I honestly want to know what they are thinking.
Deep down, all vices that involve overuse occur when one is extremely lonely though. The only real issue with pornography is that it is mixed with other emotions / needs that can lead one to feeling much more hurt when the come-down occurs.
Abating loneliness is what religion used to do best; I acknowledge this despite being atheist. Unfortunately it has become demonized in today's world.
2) In any case it's the creators doing the cheating. Should malls be banned if one store happens to sell counterfeited handbags?
It was a win, win and win.
But at the end of the day real estate market crashed and we had an incredibly hard time to convince new clients that these business model actually works.
Help Patrick spot a contradiction!
These platforms are designed for maximum effectiveness to empty our wallets, our brains and our souls. I wish this man all the best for recognising the bad. May we all change.
Because he clearly is a victim.
In the GFE-MMO, the only way you win is not to play.
There might be just a couple of different forms of intelligence but there are plenty ways to be stupid and one does not preclude the other.
EDIT: I tried to find the article, but apparently so many accomplished university professors fall for romance scams that it is hopeless.
EDIT: Found it. Wasn't in The New Yorker, but The New York Times Magazine https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/magazine/the-professor-th...
Perpetuating the idea that all that women have to do is "be sexy", the downright exploitation of lonely guys, probably isolating them even more and turning them into bigger outcasts (née creeps), fuelling the short term reward frenzy in both sides, and let's not even open the can of worms that is the drugs that are behind everything.
And then Kunz, who had already investigated by himself and even became a chatter. What an incredible story really.
It's great even though I know all of the "revelation" about porn stars not actually chatting with the customers.
"Some people think that the Germans are all straightforward and undiplomatic. The perceived inability of the Germans to engage in small talk and their unromantic nature are discussed by foreigners."
and
"Germans are perceived to be stiff and humourless."
from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotypes_of_Germans
But it's also reinforcement bias on your part. The 10% of Germans that speak perfect English, have explored foreign cultures and are great conversationalists, those you probably won't remember as typical Germans.
You could even restrict the scale a little, by promising and contractually requiring the "model" to read all of your (mostly inane) chat messages, and perhaps personally reply to some minimal number. Or maybe that's a higher cost tier.
Of course people wouldn't spend as much as they do on OF. But would it have enough value to people? It's more than what I assume regular porn sites provide.
More interestingly: is it ethical? Obviously, it's moreso than OF. But taking advantage of people's base impulses always feels creepy to me. I even have misgivings about coffee shops, not to mention liquor stores. Feeding addiction is not kind, even when the consumer is wholly willing.
One could ask would adding interactivity makes things worse compared to more static media? Like books, music or movies? Many which sell similar fantasies.
But you're since you expected there to be a anything but an illusion of intimacy. The extra people/AI bots involved don't change the fundamentals, but just a fantasy cherry on top of an illusory cake
I'm not convinced the link is so direct and easy to prove. If an eBay seller sends you a rock instead of a gold ring you don't really have a claim against eBay.
OnlyFans does not employ these chatters nor is explicitly aware of their existence. They are a very thin intermediary that offers communication, moderation, safety and payment services, but do not produce the content, nor do they employ the obviously freelance performers. It's very likely they have lines in their performer TOS that forbid models from such misrepresentation, while securing a chat session to ensure a certain person is the one typing is a very hard problem to solve and by no means an industry standard approach.
Two legal experts said that disclaimer might protect the company from liability. Six others disagreed.
“They still have to have some sort of due diligence to stop people getting defrauded,” said Katherine Hart, spokesperson for the Chartered Trading Standards Institute, a UK nonprofit consumer protection group."""
Dear gods, sometimes the jokes just write themselves.
The platform is one where real waste could happen... But as whole, it is not so much time to put in in single session and uploading result.
The LLM/AI-gen ones are on Instagram, selling subscriptions.
> One of them is a 31-year-old semiconductor assembly technician who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. He said he spent nearly $20,000 on OnlyFans over four years before learning he’d been fooled by chatters. “I was lonely,” he said. “That’s really pathetic that someone is trying to take advantage of you.”
I guess lonely, horny and hungry people make for the easiest clients . What a sick world we live in.
20k on porn means you need to see a shrink asap.
Regardless if he was chatting wit the actual model or some guy pretending to be her, they still would have told him ANYTHING he wanted to hear as long as he was there to pay.
I've had some first-hand experience with people like him and trust me - there is usually a very good reason why people like him need to pay to get attention from "women". You can blame the porn/sex industry as much as you like but there is a type of man that will never be satisfied by a normal relationship.
There are also men who, due to the brutal realities of dating and the "relationship market," will likely never have access to a normal relationship. I'm not sure we can 100% blame the user here, either.
If you’ve been around long enough, unless you’re really lucky, you’ve had that experience before.
There are the ‘I must be a stay at home mom/dad because I can’t handle the stress’ type situations.
There are the ‘I need to buy x we can’t afford to be happy’ type situations.
There are the ‘we have kids now and he/she can’t leave, so I can do whatever I want’ type situations.
I had someone actively sabotage my job (in a very difficult to detect way) because they were worried I’d leave them if I was too ‘independent’, or got promoted.
And I’ve seen many other people have spouses do that to them too. Everything from dramatically increasing stress levels at home, to sabotaging sleep, or creating health issues until the spouse stopped ‘getting away’. All the way up to creating false accusations and trying to destroy them unless they got ‘under control’.
It doesn't have to be just partners - a friend recently told me about her husband's younger sister who would regularly spend beyond her means then rely on her brother / parents to bail her out of her debts.
That's also one of those impossible relationships where you feel obligated to help but the relationship has a real cost.
Luckily he figured out something was wrong before they went bankrupt on top of everything, but yikes. And at that point, divorce won’t solve his joint liability for the balance.
At least the younger sister can only guilt the family into trying to cover her butt financially, instead of - well whatever that was.
Even if no one if staying home, with the impact of a young kid, 150% is generous.
Because if the other party works as hard/long as they used to, expect resentment and turbulence.
Sure every one of these can be squeezed but living solo/without kids is definitely leaner but yes its a double hit of expenditure goes up and earnings go down
How would that problem be solved by ending the relationship? You'd then have to pay even more for seperate rent, cars, etc. Or are you talking about one partner spending excessively and dragging the other partner into this financial mess?
For this to be coming up, necessarily someone (or both) has to be overspending.
If both are low earners, and aggregate earnings are insufficient to cover the lowest set of available expenses, then someone (or both) need to be living in with their parents. Or they’re going to be homeless, or similar.
Often; it’s one or both parties overspending on unnecessary expenses. In which case, splitting up almost always changes the dynamics so at least one of the parties can stay solvent.
But there are infinite ways to screw this pooch, of course.
That's obviously an extreme example but when your expenditure is that high it necessitates being analytical about how you're spending your time and money.
Then if you already had that mindset, it's natural to see how it can extend into relationships (and friends and family).
Ultimately, relationships are about give and take and we can only give as much as we can give etc. But there's always some implicit assumption of parity and even if you don't care for perfect parity, it's worth doing the audit once in a while to assess whether you're happy being a net giver or a net taker or if you need a reset because relationships of all natures can and have been broken over money.
While it may be more expensive anyways, the payoff is a real person inerested in you, your life, and wanting to be with you.
To an extent, it's like comparing living a happy life and doing drugs, because after all both of them end up translating as "dopamine in the brain".
There's this massive disparity in the signals I'm getting about inflation and cost of living.
On one hand there are people spending $20k (over four years, which softens my point a bit), and extending that, there are enough people spending enough money to keep OnlyFans ... performers (is that the right word?) able to hire "chatters" and their various production teams, and this covers all the various 'socials' where cough influencers can make their livings via donations from their subscribers (I want to use a perjorative term).
On the other hand, cost of living pressures are forcing people to choose between paying for food and heating their homes (so my local media headlines tell me).
Is this "just" the increasing wealth inequality in the world?
Inflation being "sticky" feels like it's being driven by most people not really, actually needing to tighten their belts in the face of inflation. The number of new cars on the road, the number of people out shopping retail doesn't seem to be shrinking.
Having said that, unemployment numbers have been surprisingly good up until the last print.
P.S. I know someone who pays for regular "youtube coaching" sessions. Maybe I'm just old and don't get it, but... :rollseyes: sigh.
It's a business expense. They hire them because they bring in more money than they cost.
In part, I don't blame these men for falling for that scam. The idea of "engaging into a relationship with people I find pretty" is an almost ubiquitous human trait.
I think that the problem for them, is that they're exposed for so long at OF models that real women, with varying body types, simply fall of the insanely high standard set by the models.
And I'm sure that the brain, at its most primal self, can't distinguish between a PNG and "a super attractive woman that lives in my tribe near my hut".
That, and a really lonely life that sets the standards for a relationship really low.
The last chapter is dedicated to 'chatbots'
It seems pretty obvious that these men are acting on a bunch of mating instincts designed to trigger courtship rituals. The situation is so far away from them ending up with a mate though that the whole thing is a bit sick - but given that they were always going to end up with nothing, does it matter if they got nothing in a different way than they expected? They're basically paying for a fantasy, getting a fantasy, then some people are getting unhappy when they discover that the fantasy was all in their imagination.
The obvious answer to me is to note that the situation is very sad and then leave it alone. If someone is going to dump money into the internet then that is on them. If there is technically fraud happening and someone wants to push that angle then let the courts sort that out.
Gambling in the UK is quite heavily regulated, though. That includes deposit limits, forced loss limits, max bets, min period between bets - stuff like that.
Sort of. There is a massive difference even within the EU (GB is not EU, of course). Most of Asia is quite lax for instance. So is South America (and South Africa). US is on per state basis, generally more lax than Europe.
However, in most jurisdictions KYC is mandatory along with identity+age verification, with anti money laundering applied.
With the OnlyFans operators it's false advertising from day one - they sell the right to chat with the model. Then they have a guy chat with you, pretending to be the model. If this was spelled out clearly in a terms of service or something the business would dry up overnight, these men don't want to pay money to chat with other men. They are being misled about what they're purchasing. The fraud is very clear-cut.
Ryan Long did a hilarious bit on this, extremely NSFW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXXo_NPonss
Your comparison would make more sense if casinos were allowed to lie about the odds, change them with zero disclosure or warning, and even change the game you're playing or the opponent you're playing against without telling you as it happens.
What I hate about this particular type of criminality is that it's so lucrative, all the other content on the Internet is turning into a loss leader for fraudulent OnlyFans subscriptions. Reddit, Instagram and dating apps have all been flooded with "women" posting racy photos with links back to OnlyFans in their profiles or after some short message script. You can't do anything about this because it's a women's rights and free speech issue, supposedly. But what the virtue signalers fail to understand is that it's rarely actual women creating these profiles or engaging for the OF sub fee, it's essentially just pimps (usually male) who hire that woman for periodic photoshoots. Or perhaps the people at Meta and Reddit are well aware but they like all the ad revenue they're collecting by keeping this porn studio's loss leader content online, so they keep their lips sealed.
Gambling, addiction, whatever this is - they all seem very similar to me. Humans are irrational and can be taken advantage of. It is akin to human software being hacked.
However, I think this principle extends far - most of society is largely like this on different levels. Even the process of democracy and voting revolves around politicians deceiving people and providing fantasies. Manipulating human behaviour is becoming more of a known science over time. The idea that it is a solution to have the state be like a powerful parent and protect people from themselves bothers me greatly. I suppose the game must play out; there will be winners and losers, and natural selection will march onward...