Is it a digital rebranding of exploitation?

OnlyFans is a subscription-based online platform in the UK that allows creators to monetize their pictures and videos by selling them to their subscribers. The 2016 platform gained popularity during the Covid-19 pandemic after hitting 90 million users, up from 120000 in 2019 (Cilizoglu, 2024). OnlyFans offers various content, such as graphic designers, fitness experts, musicians, and artists. However, sex workers have poured into the platform due to its easy access such that they view it as a source of “easy money as source of soft porn”.

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However, debate on the essence of OnlyFans has intensified on whether the platform represents the new era of empowerment for sex workers or its digital rebranding of exploitation. OnlyFans has just changed how sex work is done in the modern well, which has come with a lot of positive changes where the content creators assume ownership of their work. OnlyFans represents the new era of empowerment by providing financial rewards and identification, providing content creators with greater control over the content, and boosting confidence while allowing exploration of sexuality.

OnlyFans empowers sexual workers by allowing content creators to share their videos and photos online and earn financial incentives. The income generated from the content is shared, with 20% from the subscription fee and 80% from the content creators (Safee, 2021). Individuals aged 18 years and above can create an OnlyFans account, enabling them to earn income and providing some form of empowerment. The platform has eliminated intermediaries in the form of agencies that used to exploit sex workers in traditional setups. The agencies in the conventional setting were exploiting sexual workers who were involved in unpaid labor, with the intermediaries taking most of the money. OnlyFans has allowed content creators to interact with clients directly, eliminating companies, publishers, and agents that would keep more income for themselves, leaving sexual workers living the low life.

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The new framework provided by OnlyFans has allowed content creators to assume complete control of handling their materials and enjoy significant control over their financial benefits.

OnlyFans has allowed content creators from marginalized groups to attain impossible economic freedom in traditional settings. In the era before the online gig social, society was already getting comfortable with sexual oppression and exploitation. The sexual workers involved in direct content creation would remain poor, while the agencies publishing all the content would remain poor with no hope of improving their living standards. OnlyFans has come to end such oppression by giving chance to content creators to embrace their sexual identity as their terms (De Gioannis et al., 2025). In OnlyFans, content creators can develop and shape their fanbase by keeping a significant portion of their earnings. The platform has achieved this milestone by democratizing content creation and selling, and it is controlling this. The platform can interact directly with the clients to negotiate the price of their content, thus empowering them economically. OnlyFans has demonstrated the real empowerment of women in a society where others have commodified sexuality. The platform has allowed women to exercise more control and ownership over their narratives, create personal boundaries, and interact with subscribers in an individualized and specific approach. The new trend enables women to set prices for their content, have real-time interactions with the client, and develop personalized content, making it easier to achieve financial independence.

Greater Control over Content

OnlyFans is the new era of "empowerment", which empowers content creators to have greater control over their content. The platform allows creators to create an audience only interested in the work, hence a more personal feeling. There are considerable challenges, such as people reselling the content to others and thus making revenue from others' work. The creators are faced with the challenge where individuals screenshot the content and then redistribute it to earn illegal revenue. The hackers use a tool known as Scrapper to download any content it has accessed. The scrapped information is sold to rogue groups selling adult content at a price below the OnlyFans subscription fee. However, since the platform allows interaction with the clients, it's possible to invest in creating an audience willing to support the success of the work.

Therefore, it's a matter of building a loyal fan base willing to promote your content, hence having better control of it (Cardosa et al., 2022). This means that creators can determine how to create content based on fan base preferences. Only creators can set the prices and form of content to create where freedom and self-entrepreneurship are encouraged in neoliberal discourse. The discourse focuses on the political and economic theory encouraging free market privatization while against government intervention (Zhang, 2024). Neoliberal discourse is built on the idea that everyone is self-managing, enterprising, and independent and the assumption that all individuals have the right to free choice. Therefore, the theory fits in with the new features of OnlyFans, where content creators assume more control over the creation and distribution of their content.

 Actionable Solutions

The first actionable solution propagated by this post and the matrix is the boosting of confidence and exploring sexuality since the platform empowers content creators to share sexual content on their terms. By enjoying the economic freedom from the website, women should be allowed to try new things regarding sexuality. There is the challenge of some receiving low incomes, but by boosting women's confidence, the platform could be more empowering. The validation of new things would boost their confidence, hence trying new things by learning of their likes and dislikes. Also, content creators need to understand that content creation is not the work of low-income people but a way of improving the economic situation. For instance, wealthy celebrities such as Bella Thorne create content on the platform to allow them to make more income to increase their wealth. Therefore, confidence would change how women view content creation on the platform, motivating them to improve their efforts and earn more. Confidence would be key to ensuring that the content creators view the platform as empowerment rather than the rebrand for exploitation.

REFERENCES

• De Gioannis, E., Casnici, N., & Sigala, E. (2025). Online Sex Work and Subscription-Based Digital Platforms: A Scoping Review. The Journal of Sex Research, 1-12.

• Safaee, A. (2021). Sex, love, and OnlyFans: How the gig economy is transforming online sex work (Master's thesis, San Diego State University).

• Zhang, L. (2024). Stigma, agency, and ‘whorearchy’: A post-feminism neoliberal discourse analysis of sex work in the era of OnlyFans. Exploration Journal.

Published/Edited By Nehemiah Kipserem JCU MEd-MBA 2023