©Reuters. FILE PHOTO: A logo for OnlyFans is seen in this illustrative image, February 29, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Illustration/File Photo
By Linda So and Andrew RC Marshall
(Reuters) – Three U.S. and two British lawmakers called for tougher protections against online sexual exploitation after a Reuters investigation this week identified more than 140 police complaints of non-consensual pornography on OnlyFans, the popular solo website adults.
“It is absolutely unconscionable,” U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, Republican of Missouri, said in a statement about the abuses alleged in the complaints.
“These findings confirm what my office has known for years: Americans are being sexually exploited on OnlyFans,” said Wagner, who sponsored a federal law passed in 2018 that allows victims to sue websites that knowingly host activities abusive commercial sex. “Congress and federal law enforcement must do more.”
Through public records requests to major U.S. law enforcement agencies and a review of court cases, Reuters identified 128 cases in which adults complained that sexual content depicting them had been posted on OnlyFans without their consent between January 2019 and November 2023. A Florida woman, alleging that a video of her rape was posted and sold on OnlyFans, filed a lawsuit in November 2022 against the platform under federal laws, including Wagner’s.
In the United Kingdom, where OnlyFans is based, Reuters documented 18 reports of non-consensual pornography appearing on the site.
“Social media platforms have become a safe haven for predators,” U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said in a statement to Reuters. “Rape victims, including children, are not only raped at the time of the attack, but are victimized again and again as their abusive material rapidly spreads online. Even worse, platforms profit from this activity. This is unacceptable .”
U.S. Rep. Jennifer Wexton, Democrat of Virginia, called for greater accountability from perpetrators to ensure that “we are protecting the rights and lives of all victims and survivors.”
OnlyFans claims on its website that it is building “the world’s most secure social media platform.” Its CEO, Keily Blair, said the company reviews 100% of content using human moderators and artificial intelligence tools.
In a statement responding to Reuters’ findings, a spokesperson for OnlyFans said that “in the few examples where bad actors have misused our platform, “OnlyFans” has quickly removed the content, banned the user and actively supported investigations and prosecutions.” He added that OnlyFans will strengthen its consent verification procedures at the end of 2022.
Reuters found more than a dozen complaints of nonconsensual pornography filed subsequently.
In a court filing, OnlyFans’ US subsidiary Fenix Internet said it will seek to dismiss the Florida woman’s sex trafficking case, citing a federal law that grants websites immunity from lawsuits based on posts from their users.
UK-based OnlyFans is one of 10 companies, including social media platforms and a porn site, working with stopNCII.org, a British project designed to prevent the sharing of non-consensual intimate images (NCII) online.
David Wright, CEO of South West Grid for Learning, the British charity that runs stopNCII.org, did not address Reuters’ findings on OnlyFans, but said: “We encourage all platforms to take the same steps as OnlyFans to prevent the NCII and work towards the eradication of intimate image abuse.”
Damian Collins, a member of the British parliament, said the Reuters investigation “clearly shows there are gaps in the systems used by OnlyFans and Ofcom, the U.K.’s communications regulator, should challenge the company on the basis of this evidence.”
Collins chaired a parliamentary committee on the UK Online Safety Bill, which became law in October 2023. The law requires social media companies to quickly prevent and remove illegal content, including non-consensual porn, and to prevent children to access harmful content or pornography.
Ofcom can fine companies that fail to comply with the rules up to £18 million ($23 million) or 10% of their global turnover, whichever is greater. The application of the law proceeds in phases.
OnlyFans said it doesn’t know how much adult content is on its site. It also features sports, music and other non-sexual content.
“I am concerned that if OnlyFans cannot say how much adult content is on its platform, or how many accounts are dedicated to sharing user-generated pornography, then it does not have sufficiently robust monitoring systems in place,” Collins said in a statement. “This cannot be left to upload tools and AI alone, effective human oversight of platform policies is also needed.”
An Ofcom spokesperson told Reuters that tackling sexual abuse and other illegal harm online will be its priority under the Online Safety Act. The regulator is “already actively engaging with many services about the robustness of their protection measures, including OnlyFans, under existing video-sharing platform regulations,” the spokesperson said.
“We have seen some improvements as a result of this effort, but there is still more to do.”
In a January report on video-sharing platforms, Ofcom said OnlyFans had introduced measures to verify the age of its British users and made it easier for them to report child pornography.
In a post on
He expressed concern about the site’s distinctive subscription model, in which content from individual creators is hidden behind a paywall.
“OnlyFans has great PR. But their paywall prevents law enforcement from searching for illegal content,” he wrote.
(Reporting from Washington DC and Marshall from London. Jason Szep and Rosa Furneau contributed reporting. Editing by Julie Marquis)