Child predators are exploiting kids on OnlyFans despite vows of safety (www.reuters.com)
from jeffw@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 02:13
https://lemmy.world/post/17304944

#technology

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jeffw@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 02:14 next collapse

I’ve said this for years as others online have claimed OF is so safe. You don’t know the full story. It is not necessarily a more ethical business model than traditional porn

TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 05:32 next collapse

It’s definitely more ethical in that it allows the creators to get more of the money.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t issues. Clearly it doesn’t fix the whole issue of people under 18 sometimes making their way into the industry. It’s not a silver bullet that fixes an entire (sometimes problematic) industry.

I don’t know who was trying to tell you that OF solves everything about the porn industry, there would be no further issues, and that we’d live happily ever after, but that was obviously never going to be the case.

jeffw@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 05:48 next collapse

OF take 30% I think. What does an average scene make on OF? How does that compare to the pay rate for old school porn?

Deceptichum@quokk.au on 07 Jul 2024 06:12 next collapse

Do most employers spend 70% of their profit on the staff wages?

Plopp@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 06:44 next collapse

How is 70% of what customers pay the same as 70% of their profits?

rand_alpha19@moist.catsweat.com on 07 Jul 2024 11:07 collapse

I guess that depends on the overhead. How much does it cost to maintain an Only Fans business?

Since equipment (camera, lighting, outfits, toys, etc.) is a fixed 1-time cost outside of consumables such as makeup, condoms, etc., I'd imagine that the profit margin is relatively high compared to most other types of business.

But that's just me making inferences, I have no authority or experience in these fields.

Plopp@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 12:37 collapse

Those purchases aren’t paid for by Only Fans. It’s the content creators who pay for all that (unless there’s a way to get sponsored by OF, I don’t know). However, reliably storing and streaming video in high quality across the globe with low latency, both live and on demand, which is what OF does, is expensive af. It’s one of the reasons, if not the main one, there are no real competitors to YouTube.

[deleted] on 07 Jul 2024 16:07 collapse

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Plopp@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 18:32 collapse

I’m sorry, but you’re confused, and you’re making me very confused. Or I’m confused and you’re confused also. All I know is I’m confused. And you.

Viewer (customer) pays $100 for some content. Of those 100, OF (infrastructure & service provider) takes $30 as an income and the remaining $70 goes to the content creator as income.

Profit is what’s left from the income after you have paid your costs. The 30% OF takes is an income from which they will have to pay for things needed to run OF, and the 70% the content creators get is their income from which they have to pay for the things they need to create the content. Wages are included in the costs. What’s left after paying bills, wages etc are the profits.

JasonDJ@lemmy.zip on 07 Jul 2024 16:37 next collapse

Creators on OF or any social media platform can’t be compared to employees. They are more like suppliers.

dezmd@lemmy.world on 08 Jul 2024 20:13 collapse

You mean gross revenue, not profit. 30% profit is after expenses including CoGS/wages and is good money if it scales.

hendrik@palaver.p3x.de on 07 Jul 2024 07:33 next collapse

I think 30% is a fairly common number. That's also the exact share Google, Apple take if you're a programmer and sell Apps on their platform. And probably also what you're facing when selling online courses or other things. I'd be surprised if a platform that also offers some infrastructure, takes less than say 20 or 30%.

jeffw@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 14:21 next collapse

From my understanding, it’s higher than OF alternatives

hendrik@palaver.p3x.de on 07 Jul 2024 14:26 collapse

Are there good (more ethical? cheaper?) OF alternatives? That's not my world at all...

jeffw@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 16:42 collapse

Fansly exists, there are others that’s I’ve seen referenced but it’s not something I’m super familiar with.

kent_eh@lemmy.ca on 07 Jul 2024 16:12 collapse

For comparison with non-porn, youtube takes more than 50% from adsense and 30% of supetchat/super thanks .

TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 07:39 collapse

I think receiving 70% of the prices that you yourself set and deem acceptable is likely better than ?% of whatever PornHub or XHamster say they made from your video predominantly through ad revenue.

At the very least, it gives creators a great amount more control. In terms of setting prices, in terms of creating content they want to make as opposed to what a production company says, in terms of how you want to advertise, in terms of whether you want to lock your content behind a paid tier or not, etc.

And 30% is also pretty standard. Google, Apple, Valve, etc all charge 30%. Shit, on twitch it’s 50% IIRC. I’m not saying it’s perfect and couldn’t be cheaper, but it’s the usual market rate.

JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz on 07 Jul 2024 12:36 collapse

Also the article isn’t even so much about underaged users trying to get on the platform to post pictures of themselves or trying to gain access to porn, OF seems to be fairly good at keeping them out, it’s adults posting content involving minors and that’s a lot harder problem to prevent without literally going through every upload manually.

Microw@lemm.ee on 07 Jul 2024 22:47 next collapse

Yeah.

Diaz set up an account and had a woman verify it as hers. That woman, whom police didn’t identify, later quit OnlyFans. But her account remained live and accessible to Diaz. He filled it with videos of the underage girl

That’s really not easy to catch, no matter what platform you are. Some people will do complicated shit to evade the eyes of the law for their illicit activities.

Buddahriffic@lemmy.world on 08 Jul 2024 19:48 collapse

It’s almost like creating a platform where the intent is for users to post content without any kind of curation or manual review is itself a flawed idea. I understand how tempting the whole thing is, to set up a platform that allows you to be a passive middleman and take a cut of all activity on the platform.

Should be a law that if a platform is making money from something, it is also responsible for that content. Curation shouldn’t be enforced by law, but the legality of the content should be, whether it be illegal on its own like in this case or fraud. Ads included.

JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz on 08 Jul 2024 22:09 collapse

You do realise how ironic posting that to Lemmy of all places is?

Buddahriffic@lemmy.world on 08 Jul 2024 22:58 collapse

I’m talking about the commercial platforms where the idea is to scale up to the point where some small fee results in large revenues and companies often scale beyond their capacity to review the content of their platform. Others end up hurt in the process while the company makes money from it.

Zak@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 23:18 collapse

The main thing I’m getting from the article is that adults who try to profit from abusing children on OnlyFans get arrested.

jeffw@lemmy.world on 08 Jul 2024 18:39 collapse

The ones who get caught, yeah.

Zak@lemmy.world on 08 Jul 2024 19:25 collapse

It seems to me that OnlyFans takes several steps that make it easier for police and prosecutors to do their job, some of which are detailed in the article. What additional steps do you think they should take?

jeffw@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 2024 04:02 collapse

None. My point is that there’s a shit ton of abuse out there. Only a tiny amount is caught

You said the people who do this get arrested. But they don’t. Only a tiny fraction get caught and arrested

Zak@lemmy.world on 10 Jul 2024 15:35 collapse

I guess I’m thinking about this from a solutions-oriented mindset: what concrete, achievable steps can various entities take to reduce child abuse? For an adult content platform, the identity verification steps OnlyFans uses seem reasonable; even when an offender uses an account owned by someone else, that often provides enough of a lead for investigators.

TheBigBrother@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 02:29 next collapse

At this point of social decomposition, I suspect that rather than being predators, it is the children themselves who do it.

jeffw@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 02:49 next collapse

Really? There’s like 10 examples here of children being abused and your response is to talk about how kids are bad?

TheBigBrother@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 02:53 collapse

Yeah I mean I’m not saying there are no predators out there but at this point of a scum society I think the majority of children on OF are not exactly victims of a predator.

naticus@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 04:06 next collapse

What you’re experiencing is generational bias and forming an opinion without actual facts. Be better.

TheBigBrother@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 04:42 next collapse

It’s a matter of common sense… what did you expect to happen with so many abandoned children (without dad, mom or both) with these ideologies of objectification of people and with the easy access that children have to the Internet today. You don’t need to be a genius to realize that most likely the majority of children who are in OF are not necessarily because of a predator in question.

I understand the lack of studies about this but anyway I believe if you research there will be no information available.

Eggyhead@kbin.run on 07 Jul 2024 06:05 next collapse

The facts could be there, but people have good reason to be reluctant to go looking for them. Kids are dumb. They do stupid things all the time when there’s nobody there to tell them how stupid and dangerous it is. Their brains soak up as much as possible, and when they hit puberty, their brains start sloughing off what it thinks is excess, and suddenly they think it’s a good idea to ride a bike off a waterfall or some shit. Secretly opening an onlyfans for stupid easy money from pervs seems hardly a stretch to me if you knew you could avoid being caught.

gian@lemmy.grys.it on 08 Jul 2024 12:56 collapse

Maybe you are right but the actual facts are that even outside OF there are underage female prostitutes that do it for money or the latest bag from some high end brand and often are prey of some predator. Only difference is that off-line prostitution is harder to find.
OF is only folowing what it is happening in the real life, making it easier obviously, but it don’t create any new dynamic.

naticus@lemmy.world on 08 Jul 2024 17:34 collapse

I’m not commenting on the existence of it happening, I’m commenting on the use of the word “majority” to give themselves credibility. It’s dismissive of the issue and a way to ride out your bias as if it’s justified. Does it happen where minors get involved with OF on their own? I have no doubts. Is it the majority of OF accounts where a minor is involved? No one knows and making guesses isn’t productive.

XeroxCool@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 13:19 collapse

“majority”

You sound like you feel guilty after you masturbate and your favorite expedition was the Mayflower

catloaf@lemm.ee on 07 Jul 2024 02:55 next collapse

Weird way to brag about not reading the article, but ok

db2@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 03:24 collapse

This is the sentence in the entire large article that person seems to be laser focused on:

In other cases, minors got past OnlyFans vetting to purvey their own sexually explicit material, police records show.

It later has interview excerpts with one girl who sold her own material across two accounts. It’s a small part of the entire article though.

Emperor@feddit.uk on 07 Jul 2024 04:43 next collapse

I suspect that rather than being predators, it is the children themselves who do it.

How tech-literate are those toddlers?

TheBigBrother@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 04:45 collapse

I’m not talking about toddlers, I’m talking about people under 18yo who legally are considered as minors.

RecluseRamble@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 07 Jul 2024 05:51 next collapse

hundreds of sexually explicit videos and images of minors – from toddlers to teens – appeared on the website

Some teens maybe. But toddlers? Have you read the article?

TheBigBrother@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 05:56 collapse

Yes, I am not referring to the entirety but to a generality, in the case of toddlers it is obvious that I am not referring to that.

Eggyhead@kbin.run on 07 Jul 2024 05:55 next collapse

Or parents who exploit their kids for easy, filthy money.

MonkderDritte@feddit.de on 07 Jul 2024 14:42 collapse

Of the 30 cases reviewed by Reuters, more than half resulted in an arrest and at least three in criminal convictions.

Microw@lemm.ee on 07 Jul 2024 22:50 collapse

This is the US, minors posting themselves would also lead to arrests.

(And the actual platform with a reputation for minors selling their nudes would be Snapchat)

lowleveldata@programming.dev on 07 Jul 2024 04:48 collapse

Why are kids allowed on OnlyFans?

jeffw@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 04:58 next collapse

They aren’t allowed, nor is it legal. That’s kinda the point of the article

lowleveldata@programming.dev on 07 Jul 2024 05:53 next collapse

Actually reading the article? Me on Lemmy? idk that’s a bit far fetched

Darkenfolk@dormi.zone on 07 Jul 2024 10:01 next collapse

There is no article. There is merely a link to some other site than lemmy here.

bighatchester@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 13:06 collapse

My gf had to submit pictures of her ID like 4 times with all her personal information to be able to post . And I had to go through the same process to be able to be included in the videos . So I don’t really understand how moniors can post in there .

XeroxCool@lemmy.world on 07 Jul 2024 13:14 next collapse

Fake IDs, fake foreign IDs, mismatched IDs?

Microw@lemm.ee on 07 Jul 2024 22:50 next collapse

The article explains it in one case, an adult woman verified the account and then they posted a minor’s videos on it instead.

But the article also said that they only know about 30 cases in 5 years in the US. Which doesn’t sound like a huge amount to me personally (still too many obviously)

bighatchester@lemmy.world on 08 Jul 2024 16:43 collapse

Yeah it doesn’t seem that widespread to me for the amount of people in there . It’s probably impossible to get it to 0 . There is always going to be people putting Alot of work to get around it .

gian@lemmy.grys.it on 08 Jul 2024 13:03 collapse

I would love to know how you would decide if the scan or copy of my ID, with picture, I send you by mail, or upload with a web form as a jpeg, is real or a fake.

uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 07 Jul 2024 20:26 collapse

It’s similar to 10 year olds being allowed on Facebook, only there’s money and sexual activity involved.

This reminds me of Russia after the Soviet Union fell, in which nine and ten year olds were offering sexual services for lunch money, because they literally had no other means to eat.

In the States today, those jobs that were once a place for teens to get work experience and spending money are now occupied by people paying rent. Competition for fast food cashiers and grocery baggers is fierce.

And yeah, teens who are very pretty find they control their own means of production when it comes to telecommunications sex, so it’s natural they too would want to bypass regulations to get some of that sweet, sweet lucre that defines your power and privilege in this society.

She’s got a ticket to ride, and she don’t care.