Sweden made headlines when it became one of the first countries to criminalize paying for custom OnlyFans content and live cam shows. More than a year later, the people charged with enforcing the so-called “OnlyFans law” say it has hardly been used.

What the law actually bans

According to Mashable‘s Matt Binder, the change extended Sweden’s existing sex purchase law so that buying custom-made sexual content or paying for live cam shows became a crime for the buyer, punishable by up to a year in prison. Watching or buying pre-made porn stayed legal, and because Swedish law targets buyers rather than sellers, creators themselves aren’t committing a crime. The rules took effect on July 1, 2025.

In a written answer to the Swedish Riksdag in March, the government spelled out the line: paying to follow an account that regularly posts porn, or buying a pre-recorded film, falls outside the law, as long as the buyer doesn’t influence what gets made.

Prosecutors say the effect has been small

According to Socionomen‘s Annika Clemens, the law has led to barely any convictions in its first year. Jenny Granqvist, a senior prosecutor at the Swedish Prosecution Authority’s development centre, told the magazine she doesn’t know of more than a single case built on it, and that her office’s view is that it hasn’t had any major effect so far. She added that new laws take time and that this one still sends an important signal.

Paulina Bolton of Sweden’s Gender Equality Agency told Clemens that the law on its own won’t cut demand for buying sex online, and that it has to be paired with public education to shift attitudes.

Four officers, hundreds of cases

According to Socionomen‘s Therese Johansson, Stockholm police officer Simon Häggström supports the law but says his unit can’t realistically enforce it. He told Johansson that his team is four people handling hundreds of cases, and that they only deal with online purchases when they stumble across them.

Häggström also pointed to the gray zone the law creates. For a purchase to be a crime, the material has to be custom-made for the buyer, and that has to be proven. Sellers can work around it by offering a menu of pre-made photos and videos, he said, which leaves courts to decide where porn ends and a “sexual act” begins. The most concrete change he has seen is that OnlyFans switched off direct messaging so buyers can’t contact creators in Sweden directly.

Some lawmakers want it tougher

Not everyone thinks the law goes far enough. In a written question to the government in February, Social Democrat MP Sanna Backeskog argued that ongoing subscription payments to personal accounts should count as buying a sexual act too, calling the current setup a loophole, according to the Riksdag record. The government’s reply stressed that the law was never meant to be a general ban on producing or buying porn.

The takeaway

Sweden’s experiment shows how hard it is to police custom content once it moves behind a paywall. For now, the practical impact on creators has come more from platform changes like disabled DMs than from courtrooms. But with lawmakers pushing to close the “subscription loophole,” creators who sell to Swedish fans should keep a close eye on where the line lands next, and other countries will be watching too.

Image: Riksdagshuset, Sweden’s Parliament House in Stockholm, by Julian Herzog, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons