Analysis Of The Week: Only Fans

Analysis Of The Week: Only Fans​

The Story

“When Beyoncé rapped about us on the ‘Savage Remix’ and Cardi B joined the platform, that’s when we really started to see the growth accelerate,” entrepreneur Tim Stokely told Bloomberg in December 2020 of OnlyFans, the subscribers’ platform best known for its adult content. During the pandemic, global subscriptions lifted from 20 million to 120 million, and transactions rose sevenfold to £1.7 billion (Financial Times).

Love Island’s Megan Barton Hanson recently spoke at the Cambridge University Union and described OnlyFans as a base where you feel “completely in power, and in control of your images and your body.” She suggests that it is because “you’ve got full ownership of the pictures and know exactly where they’re going” (The Tab).

The Background

OnlyFans was founded in 2016 by Tim Stokely, then 33, with a £10,000 loan from his father, an ex-Barclays investment banker. The CEO has built a family business, employing his 77 year old father Guy and his older brother Thomas as COO, with the company taking a 20% cut of payments taken on the adult website, including tips (The Sunday Times).

Users, including influencers or celebrities, charge fans for pictures, videos and customised content, and the reach is growing. Charging can be per pay-per-view or monthly, starting at $5 – reality TV start Blac Chyna charges $50 per month. Former Disney star Bella Thorne charges $20 per month, and claims to have made more than $2 million in a week on OnlyFans (Pocket-Lint).

The internet has destabilized the porn industry. From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, studios would hire models who could make “north of $5,000 a scene” and supplement this with “five-figure sums doing nightclub appearances” (The New York Times). While numerous sex workers have joined OnlyFans, Stokely seems keen for the company not to be pigeonholed, with the site also enabling subscribers to view lifestyle and fitness videos. Earlier this year, US designer Rebecca Minkoff used her account to showcase behind-the-scenes New York Fashion Week insights. OnlyFans recently launched an on-demand TV channel which includes some longer content, where the company hopes to expand its audience further.

What It Means For Businesses And Law Firms

According to the Financial Times, “In 2018, Leonid Radvinsky, an entrepreneur behind the porn site MyFreeCams, bought at least 75 per cent of OnlyFans’ parent company, Fenix International”. What he paid has not been disclosed, and Ukrainian-American Radvinsky’s slightly chequered past includes settlements for a 2004 court case brought by Microsoft, which involved “millions of illegal and deceptive e-mail messages to Hotmail customers, including messages that were falsely labelled as coming from Amazon.com” (ForensicNews.net).

Safeguarding is also a pressing issue. The UK Government has calculated 1.4 million children see pornography every month (The Children’s Media Foundation). While technically only those over 18 are supposed to have access to the site, teens have found ways to circumnavigate the age restriction. Underage access to the site as both a fan and a contributor has been documented by the BBC. Kate Isaacs of #NotYourPorn campaigns against the re-sharing of images, and has been involved with The Online Harms Bill, premised on protecting users of the Internet, including child users, from being exposed to harm. The creation of fake profiles is another serious legal issue associated with social media sites, and OnlyFans is no exception; with stalking, defamation and online threats also possibly resulting from the breaches of privacy (Schlun & Elseven).

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