OnlyFans keeps a 20% cut of what users pay, boasting $1.3 billion of revenue in 2023. It’s a lucrative approach to monetizing porn consumption, but the platform just hit a legal roadblock in a seemingly unlikely country.
The X-rated social media platform OnlyFans is experiencing real growth, with revenue, content, and user numbers all on the rise. The site’s over 4 million “creators” sell content – including images, videos, and personalized chats – to more than 300 million subscribers, or “fans.” It’s primarily a sex site, and claims that the platform isn’t powered by porn are usually accompanied by winks and nods to the contrary.
Sweden, which in 1971 became the second country in the world to formally legalize all forms of pornography, has not been as soft on prostitution. In 1999, the country criminalized the purchase of sex, but not the sale, in efforts to protect vulnerable women from facing stiff legal consequences.
That policy will now apply to the virtual world. As of July 1, Swedes could face up to a year in prison for paying someone for personalized online sexual services, including sexting and video content. The new law also criminalizes promoting or profiting from others who perform sex acts for payment on demand, forcing OnlyFans to pull out of Sweden.
In a country known for libertines more than prudes, the law passed with broad, cross-party support. “The idea is that anyone who buys sexual acts performed remotely should be penalized in the same way as those who buy sexual acts involving physical contact,” said Gunnar Strommer, Sweden’s Justice Minister and a member of the Moderate party.
The U.S. has drawn a harder line on in-person prostitution than Sweden. Excluding certain counties in Nevada, it is illegal to both buy and sell sex in America. But OnlyFans – which exploded in the U.S. during the pandemic – remains legal in all 50 states, allowing Fenix International Limited, the London-based firm that owns OnlyFans, to profit from the sale of millions of sext messages and live video chats.
A growing number of bipartisan lawmakers are citing concerns about the role of social media in online sex trafficking. Some are calling out OnlyFans by name.
“Americans are being sexually exploited on OnlyFans,” said U.S. Rep. Ann Wagner, a Missouri Republican. “Congress and federal law enforcement must do more.”
In 2018, Wagner sponsored the FOSTA-SESTA Act, which Donald Trump signed into law. The bill gave federal and state prosecutors more authority to go after websites on which sex is sold, even holding platforms and Internet service providers responsible for user-generated ads related to sex work. But the FOSTA-SESTA Act mostly targets traffickers who use the internet as a recruitment or facilitating tool, whereas Sweden’s law prohibits the purchase of virtual prostitution (that is, paying for sex from sex workers who provide their services in the virtual space) as well as profiting from virtual prostitution.
With Trump back in office, Wagner and like-minded lawmakers appear eager to enact stricter regulations. If Sweden’s new law were replicated in the U.S., OnlyFans’ earnings would plummet. Roughly a quarter of the site’s content creators are American women, and nearly two-thirds of the platform’s revenue is generated in the U.S., according to the most recent data.
Many sex workers say that criminalizing online prostitution is illogical because it will only result in women working in more dangerous in-person settings. A number of human rights organizations also argue that prostitution should be legalized because it grants sex workers greater access to legal protection and healthcare while also helping law enforcement better differentiate between the consenting and the coerced.
Some European governments agree, including Belgium, which last December granted sex workers formal labor rights, entitling them to sick leave, maternity pay, and pensions. Some are unionizing, and many more are opting to ditch the brothel scene and work from home.
As for trafficking, OnlyFans argues that they have invested in AI tools and ID verification systems to ensure that only of-age, consenting adults are participating on the site. It is true that OnlyFans has invested more into such measures than most other social media platforms or porn sites. But despite these filters, there are still reports of abuse and trafficking occurring on the site, which OnlyFans says is the result of only a few bad apples.
Many industry advocates say that lawmakers seeking to regulate the online sex trade are simply anti-porn religious zealots. But few U.S. lawmakers are signing on with Utah Senator Mike Lee, who is currently on his third attempt since 2022 to ban pornography nationwide. Rather, most speak of the issue in terms of the need to curb trafficking – mirroring the narrative of many Swedish lawmakers.
Sanna Backeskog, a Swedish politician and proponent of the recent law, insists she has no interest in being the porn police. She said, “This is about digitalized prostitution, where the boundaries between pornography and human trafficking are blurred.”
As lawmakers in the U.S. and Europe seek to clarify those blurred boundaries, some say Sweden is on the right track, that regulations will curb demand, and trafficking will go down. Others say the law will only make things worse as more prostitutes revert to doing their work in the dark.
The appetite for online sexual interactions is growing, and OnlyFans is reportedly on sale for $8 billion. The platform’s current owners hope that nations (especially the U.S.) won’t mimic Sweden’s recent law. After all, how else would OnlyFans continue to flourish in such a hot market?
