Two men from Illinois have filed a class-action lawsuit against global smut peddler OnlyFans, after having come to the ego-rupturing realization that the messages they were receiving as a result of their subscriptions may have not actually come from their favorite sex workers.

404 Media originally reported on the litigation, which was filed on behalf of its two plaintiffs, M. Brunner and J. Fry. The lawsuit takes aim at Fenix Internet, LLC and Fenix International Limited, the platform’s parent companies, and accuses them of furthering a vast “deception” against the site’s users. “Plaintiffs claim that Defendants unlawfully and improperly deceived and defrauded its Fans by allowing third parties to send communications on behalf of Creators in violation of OnlyFans’ TOS,” the suit reads. It also states:

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.

Gizmodo reached out to OnlyFans for comment.

It is a well known fact that many OnlyFans models do not actually talk to their subscribers. Prominent media outlets have covered this phenomenon for years, and I have always assumed that most OF subscribers know this about the business. As Brunner openly admits in the litigation, he subscribed to a model who had hundreds of thousands of followers. Just on the basis of pure common sense, what are the chances that a lady like that has the time, resources, or, more importantly, the will to answer all of her fans’ messages directly?

OnlyFans is also upfront about the potential involvement of third-party firms in customer exchanges. Indeed, the platform’s “contract” between “creators” and “fans” states: “The Fan acknowledges that third parties may assist Creators in operating their accounts and in Creator Interactions.” The implication here seems obvious, but Brunner and Fry’s lawsuit claims that this contract “obfuscates the role that third parties may play in assisting Creators with their content,” as the Fan-Creator Contract is “nested within the TOS, requires an additional action on behalf of a Fan to view, and is only referenced within the Terms of Use by hyperlink requiring a Fan to visit that page separately to understand its import to the Terms of Use.”

Roughly translated, the lawsuit appears to be saying that the fact that the contract is on a different webpage than the TOS and, thus, requires the user to click from one page to another, is unreasonable. Yes, how can you be expected to thoroughly read and understand a company’s terms of service when you’re so hungry for the “authentic connections” you can have with the starlets advertised on its website? It’s a good question, but arguably not really the company’s problem.

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