The irony, of course, is that the only thing they're a "victim" of is those same politicians.
And while OnlyFans can technically be used to sell any digital content, it is mostly selling (softcore) pornography, which is obviously sex work. Categorising it as "digital content" or "a private service" may work to skirt around the American laws that outright criminalise sex workers, but it's not fooling anyone.
Another point of note is that quite a few European countries struggle with human trafficking problems in the sex trade, even in countries where prostitution is completely legal. It's not like human traffickers haven't figured out that OnlyFans is an easy way to make money if they can manage enough accounts. There are also less obvious problems, like people who are strapped for cash and desperate, doing things they otherwise wouldn't and will later regret.
Personally, I think sex work should just be regulated like normal work and the Swedish approach ("Nordic model") is counterproductive. While I think online sex work should be treated the same as offline sex work, I think banning it is moving in the wrong direction. It's still not as bad as criminalising sex workers themselves, of course.
And “or operates a website that makes it easier to get in touch with adult content creators could be imprisoned for up to one year.”
The initial ban in Sweden was itself legislated in 1999 when the Riksdag became majority women.
The libertarian and market-driven framing is a uniquely American and Canadian lens that doesn't hold much water in much of Europe - especially highly collectivist and monocultural societies like much of Scandinavia. It's the same with attitudes around drug legalization (zero-tolerance but with a heavy rehabilitation tilt is the mainstream view in much of Europe).
[0] - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13545701.2010.54...
[1] - https://feminismandhumanrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/0...
[2] - https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/feministsatlaw/article...
I wouldn't underestimate that market. While men seem to consume more porn, "men" also includes "gay men" of course, who won't be quite as interested in seeing naked women even if we pretend women aren't interested in sex.
Plus, women may only be about a half as interested in pornography as men (according to https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2024-year-in-review 38% of visitors were female), the market sure seems large enough.
There are definitely market differences (the pay gap for male actors, for instance, and of course the double standard that judges women more than men for consuming such content) but the divide is not even close to absolute.
Your post ("it is extremely unlikely that someone in the sex industry is Swedish/Norwegian/Icelandic/Danish given the mixture of social bias and social safety net") supposes that women go into the sex industry out of desperation, but that's not true. Some people are fine with selling their bodies, to various degrees, and don't have a problem making an income that way.
u/Jug below in the thread has a more comprehensive and better written explanation.
That’s sort of like saying American politicians are too sheltered to understand people enjoy fentanyl
The sex industry is terrible for everyone involved; it's addictive, it ruins the lives of the girls and men who work in it, it spreads dangerous diseases, and it doesn't contribute to the advancement of our society. I can't imagine why anyone would support it except out of a sadomasochist curiosity.
I suspect (ironically) you may be too sheltered to understand why the sex industry is so harmful