• Analysis
Report alleges TikTok to OnlyFans pipeline promotes sex industry to girls
A year-long study by Cease and Collective Shout accuses TikTok of normalising the sex industry by letting 'sexfluencers' market OnlyFans content to young audiences, including teenage girls.
A report accuses TikTok of helping to promote and normalise the sex industry by allowing "sexfluencers" to post videos aimed at marketing pornographic content uploaded elsewhere, such as on OnlyFans.
The study behind the claim, titled the "TikTok to OnlyFans pipeline", was conducted by researchers from the campaigning organisations Cease (Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation) in the UK and Collective Shout in Australia. The researchers say they focused on TikTok because it has such a high proportion of young users and because it is where the careers of many on OnlyFans start out.
How the study was carried out
Researchers studied non-explicit content posted on TikTok over the course of a year by some of OnlyFans' most popular young female performers. They spent months scrolling through posts from a number of key "sexfluencers" and then following recommendations offered up by TikTok's algorithm.
Coded content that dodges the rules
Mentioning OnlyFans or directly linking to OnlyFans from TikTok accounts is prohibited, and TikTok prohibits sexual solicitation, including invitations to share explicit images. The report says performers get around this with coded language buried in ordinary-looking posts. Researchers described references hidden inside "girly lifestyle content" that showed the performers shopping, playing with their pets, baking or giving skincare advice.
- •Performers may use the word "corn" instead of the word "porn", or add the corn emoji next to a star emoji.
- •Euphemisms, emojis and crude gestures are used where direct mentions are blocked.
- •"Get ready with me" (GRWM) posts are used to avoid blocks.
In viral posts, OnlyFans performers told their TikTok followers about the money they had earned from selling sexual content. Many stars also do brand promotion on TikTok, advertising household items such as pet food, burgers and pineapple juice, as well as sex toys and condoms.
The wealth message
The report states that one pervasive message across the posts is that selling sexual services on OnlyFans gives you a fabulous life. It says posts promoted wealth with images of cash, big houses, private jets and expensive cars, one headed "how it feels knowing I own all of this at 23 thanks to 250,000 men". OnlyFans was also presented as the answer to poverty and unemployment, with performers describing rags-to-riches stories, and opening an account marketed as "rescuing women and girls from bleak, underprivileged lives".
"One of the most pervasive messages across these posts is that selling sexual services on OnlyFans gives you a fabulous life"
The report sets that picture against OnlyFans' own figures: its top 5,000 creators have made more than $1m each since the platform launched in 2016, while the average earnings of the site's 5 million registered performers are estimated to be about $1,000 a year.
Calls for action and platform responses
Melinda Tankard Reist, of Collective Shout, condemned TikTok as "an industrial-scale digital pimp funnelling girls into the sex industry".
"It is our view that young women and girls deserve to be protected from a predatory industry grooming them to be producers of explicit content."
She said the research was commissioned after the campaign groups learned that OnlyFans stars such as Sophie Rain and Ari Kytsya had drawn a huge following among teenage girls.
The report points to Rain's fame through content filmed in the "Bop House", a luxury pornography production house in Miami staffed by a rotating group of women selling content on OnlyFans. It notes that audition videos for the house circulate on TikTok, with hopeful recruits posting sexually suggestive dances and tagging their entries.
Last year, L'Oréal appointed Kytsya, who refers to herself as a "mattress actress", as a brand ambassador for Urban Decay, a makeup brand popular with teenagers. In the ads, viewed millions of times, she calls for makeup that performs well on mattresses.
The report's authors want countries that ban showing pornographic material to under-18s to widen those rules, so they also cover posts promoting or connected to the sex industry.
A TikTok spokesperson said: "TikTok strictly prohibits the sharing or showing of sexual content and we use advanced technologies to enforce our community guidelines." Its systems, the spokesperson added, are designed to keep content unsuitable for their age away from teenagers.
An OnlyFans spokesperson said: "OnlyFans is a platform for people aged 18 and over and we have strict onboarding processes to prevent minors accessing the platform."
