Illinois men sue OnlyFans for “deception” of chat with models

Two Illinois men have filed a class-action lawsuit against OnlyFans after realizing that messages they were receiving as part of their subscriptions may not have been directly coming from the models they thought they were messaging.

Newsweek has reached out to OnlyFans and to lawyers representing the plaintiffs outside of regular working hours via email for comment.

Why It Matters

Founded in November of 2016, OnlyFans is an online content-sharing platform that can be used to share any kind of content, such as photos, recipes and writing, but is particularly popular among sex workers.

The platform has more than 350 million registered users worldwide and 4 million creators, according to its website. Creators upload content to their accounts that only their fans can see, but fans typically pay a fee, decided by the creator, to see it. The creator keeps 80 percent of the fees paid, while the rest goes to the platform. Fans and creators can interact on the platform, including through messaging.

What To Know

The lawsuit filed by the two Illinois men is directed at Fenix Internet LLC and Fenix International Limited, the parent companies of OnlyFans.

The suit accuses them of “deception” against the site’s users and the filing states, “Plaintiffs claim that Defendants unlawfully and improperly deceived and defrauded its Fans by allowing third parties to send communications on behalf of Creators.”

The suit claims that the creators the two men were subscribed to were employing agencies to “impersonate” models and that they either would have reduced their fees or not have subscribed to the platform at all if they knew they were not speaking directly to the models.

The suit also states that the plaintiffs “did not and could not have reasonably verified the true nature of the Chatter Scams because the OnlyFans Defendants falsely represented to Fans that they were talking directly with Creators.”

Some OnlyFans agencies have offered a service in which people manage creators’ messages and sometimes respond to fans, though not all creators use the service.

OnlyFans has a public “Contract Between Fan And Creator” on its website. This contract states, in the section “Obligations between Creator and Fan in Creator Interactions” that “the Fan acknowledges that third parties may assist Creators in operating their accounts and in Creator Interactions.”

It is common for content creators, particularly high-profile ones, to employ or work with people to assist in the day-to-day running of their content, like photographers or assistants.

What People Are Saying

The lawsuit filing reads: “Despite the fact that OnlyFans’ success is built on a promise of ‘direct’ connections and ‘authentic’ relationships, OnlyFans knowingly facilitates schemes in which Fans are duped into paying to have personal interactions with Creators that are not ‘authentic’ at all. These schemes involve the deceptive outsourcing of the job of interacting with Fans, as well as other functions, to third-party ‘management’ agencies.”

An OnlyFans spokesperson previously told the magazine Cosmopolitan: “Creators may choose to work with a wide range of third parties, including photographers, videographers, talent managers and agencies, to curate and monetize their content.”