At the height of its popularity, OnlyFans was hailed as an antidote to the largely unregulated porn industry where women are routinely pushed to the extreme for content.
Indeed, when OnlyFans first shot onto the scene, Love Islander Meghan Barton-Hanson praised it for ‘changing the power dynamic for sex workers’ and ’empowering women’ while adding she uses OnlyFans as a ‘way…to express myself’.
She said: ‘OnlyFans is a platform where a sex worker or model can take charge and say what they charge for a picture, what level they work to,’ the Love Island bombshell told the Daily Star in December 2020.
‘Before, when it was all in lads’ mags, it was up to the photographer and editor dictating what level of nudity they should do.’
But in recent months, Barton-Hanson’s utopian ideal where women can take ownership over their content has come crashing down amid a slew of disturbing and outrageous stunts from stars including Bonnie Blue and Lily Phillips – as creators who flocked to the platform in its inception are now leaving in their droves.
Bonnie, 25, whose real name is Tia Billinger, recently claimed to have slept with more than 1,000 men in 12 hours – and appealed to the public to become her sex partners during the stunt – with the condition they would be filmed for her OnlyFans platform.
Although Bonnie has never provided evidence she really carried out the stunt, the shock factor alone made headlines as the extremity of the claim left many people horrified.
Similarly, Bonnie’s former friend, Lily Phillips, provoked serious concern after carrying out a stunt of a similar nature – sleeping with 100 men in a day – and appeared tearful when interviewed at the end of filming.
Such shocking and upsetting stunts reflect the nature of an extremely competitive market on a platform that is now flooded with creators – and it’s a far cry from the feminist revolution touted by its supporters just a few short years ago.
OnlyFans was founded by Hertfordshire-based businessman Tim Stokely in 2016 who described it as Instagram ‘with a payment button’ – but it wasn’t until the Covid-19 pandemic that the platform surged in popularity.
In addition to Barton-Hanson’s endorsement, celebrities including Bella Thorne, Cardi B, Iggy Azalea, Blac Chyna, Denise Richards and Carmen Electra all signed up to sell exclusive content to their fans for a monthly subscription fee – making OnlyFans the buzziest tech company at the time.
By 2021, the social media platform had 130 million registered users – up 550 per cent from 20 million – with two million creators selling everything from feet pictures, hairy chest videos, workout plans, healthy recipes, and cosplay content behind its paywall.
The number of sex workers, some of whom were among the platform’s earliest adopters, also reportedly increased amid a complete shutdown on public life and the closure of brothels.
Many saw the switch to online sex work – regulated by OnlyFans’ protections – as a good thing; the app guarantees stringent age and identity verification checks, a zero-tolerance policy for Non-Consensual Intimate Images (NCII), cutting-edge content moderation, and strict controls against human trafficking.
To put it simply, OnlyFans gave women a chance at turning the table on sex work by eliminating the ‘johns’ or ‘pimps’ and taking ownership of their work, charging what they way, and setting clear boundaries – all from behind the safety of a screen.
But five years after OnlyFans’ Covid-fuelled boom, the once ‘safe space’ appears to have been compromised as creators exit the platform in their droves and remaining stars promote ever more extreme stunts to keep up with the competition.
Last April, one of Britain’s top OnlyFans creators announced she was quitting the platform – despite her six-figure earnings.
Swansea-based Lowri Rose, now 25, started selling nude photographs of herself on OnlyFans during the Covid-19 pandemic and quickly became one of the app’s top earners.
By 2024, she told the Daily Star, her subscribers’ degrading demands had left her so depressed, she couldn’t get out of bed ‘for a really long time’.
‘It wasn’t as extreme when I started but now you have to do the most obscene things to get views and that transfers to subscriptions,’ she said.
Things like sleeping with 1,000 men in 24 hours, ‘pretending to have been gang-raped’ and simulating beastiality – requests that are becoming commonplace as the ‘personalised porn marketplace’ becomes dangerously oversaturated.
One OnlyFans model Jade (name changed) told The Sun: ‘These men would ask me to do the most disgusting things, and even asked if I would pretend to have sex with my dog.
‘Another one wanted me to crawl on all fours around the floor begging for help, pretending I had just been gang-raped.’
Speaking to The Times, psychotherapist and the director of the KlearMinds counselling service said that online sex customers can strip a ‘creator’s agency’ by making demands and then rewarding them with ‘artificial empowerment’ in the form of money.
Over the past few years, there have also been multiple reports from across the UK of OnlyFans models being harassed, stalked, and blackmailed by subscribers who develop unhealthy fixations on the women they follow.
Janine (name changed), in a statement to The Sun, recalled the horrifying moment she found one of her subscribers waiting for her outside her flat, ‘asking me for full sex’ and threatening to have her ‘thrown off OnlyFans’ if she complained to the police.
In Humberside, an OnlyFans creator went to the police after someone sent multiple envelopes containing explicit photographs from her account to her mother and neighbours.
They were all labelled ‘Your Local Slag’, according to a report by The Mirror that also uncovered six cases of sex offenders using OnlyFans in breach of serious harm protection orders.
The newspaper also spoke to an ex-OnlyFans model who claimed a ‘fan’ became increasingly aggressive and kept demanding more photos after she quit the platform.
‘You are mine and you will do what I want, when I want,’ she recalled his chilling threat.
Speaking to FEMAIL, psychotherapist Helen Villiers said: ‘Internal and social pressure to make money, the fear of losing subscribers if a creator doesn’t comply with a request, and social conditioning for women around sex, could instil a feeling of obligation in the creator.
‘Some of the requests creators get are demonstrative of the male sexual objectification of women, and represent an attitude to sex that is one of ownership and control.
‘These requests show how far we as a society have to go in sexual relationship education for both men and women,’ she continued, highlighting how OnlyFans alone cannot combat the stigma around sex work.
Meanwhile, the ‘wage gap’ between top earners like Bonnie Blue and Lily Philips – who bait subscribers with dangerous sex challenges – and the rest of OnlyFans continues to widen.
A recent report found that the average OnlyFans creator earns as little as $1,300 (£1,030) a year – or only $108 (£85).
The million-dollar payouts are reserved for those in the 0.1 per cent, like influencer Sophie Rain who recently claimed she made $43 million in her first year on OnlyFans – making her one of the biggest money makers in the site’s history.
Last year, influencer Corrina Kopf announced her retirement after making a rumoured $67 million during three years on OnlyFans, and singer Bhad Bhabie said she earned an astounding £1 million in her first six hours on the platform.
Manchester-based Jess, 22, like hundreds of other young women on OnlyFans, makes as little as £1.90 an hour for her nude photographs that often show her using sex toys.
The Masters student added she gets a lot of requests to ‘show her face’ but would only consider exposing her identity for a ‘significant amount’ of money, adding: ‘I’d probably start at about £50.’
Eve, who earns £6 or £7 from her account, admitted she felt pressured into ‘going along’ with ‘really explicit’ comments from her subscribers.
‘When I first started, I felt like I had to go along with it because they were paying – I didn’t want them to unsubscribe.
‘A lot of the time, I feel like it’s bordering on sexual assault.’
When Stokely set about trying to create a better mousetrap with his subscribers-only social media app, perhaps he failed to consider one key element: the algorithm.
The success of the billion-dollar company depends directly on the number of new users it is able to attract, while retaining its existing customers – and pornography remains its biggest draw.
However, the dramatic increase in the number of creators – enamoured by reports of million dollar earnings and early retirements – has restored the balance of power in favour of the subscribers.
‘Before lockdown the [OnlyFans] sex creators had the power, they could determine their prices,’ Florida-based Zoie Burgher told The Times in a 2021 interview.
‘But since the March to June rush that’s changed. Creators are beginning to get manipulated by the customers because the customers can just move on to another girl.
‘New girls are undercharging and doing more explicit content, more quickly for less money.’
They are also being drowned out by creators like Bonnie Blue, Lily Philips, and Annie Knight who are baiting their subscribers with 1000-person sex marathons, livestreamed births, and clips of them ‘bonking’ virgins.
However, clinical psychologist and intimacy coach Dr Lori Beth Bisbey pointed out, ‘things are not getting more extreme’ while commenting on the coercive control paying subscribers might exert on sex performers and pornstars.
‘They have always been extreme,’ she said, referring to the kink world.
‘If someone is earning six-figures by degrading themselves, and they don’t experience it as acting but rather feel degraded, choosing to quit is a healthy choice.’
In a statement to The Times, a spokesperson for OnlyFans said creators are free to delete their accounts whenever they choose.
‘We regret to hear that any creator felt forced to do anything by one of their fans.’
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