And further, scamming people in the context of sex has always been easy because of the shame in admitting you fell for it.
Imagine filing a report that you spent thousands of dollars chatting with some random person, having the chat logs submitted as evidence, etc. it’s similar to why all types of sexual assault are rarely reported
The 'able' part is the critical insight. Laws are too often passed that really have no ability to be enforced, but end up adding bureaucratic processes that law abiding companies have to follow. This also implies that governments need to actively clean up existing laws, which almost never happens unless there is enough support to pass a new law to actively supplant the old one.
I would argue that the reason has more to do with our utter inability to create common sense laws regarding anything "sex".
Later scams evolved to use prerecorded video clips etc. Which I assume is next for OF also.
[0] https://www.courtwatch.news/p/onlyfans-sued-after-two-guys-r...
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/court-throws-explosive-o...
This is like saying you paid for a celebrity plumber & a regular plumber did the work, but you're upset because you wanted the celebrity. "The job" got done one way or another. They're selling digital handjobs here, there's no need to be precious about it.
Are you serious? However goofy that sounds, they paid for a specific fantasy. They would not have paid if you advertised the service as "talk dirty with a random dude in India". If the reason they paid for this service is that they were promised a specific person, that's fraud. As simple as that.
Your judgment about whether the services are equivalent doesn't matter. If I pay you for Gucci socks, and you intentionally send me cheaper HZBZZYXY socks from Amazon instead, that's fraud even if they're still socks.
It's not impossible, you can do it with a little bit of fine tuning starting from her history of chats on the platform, and having her set a custom user-level prompt where she lists her interests, hobbies and things she likes. Then give her auto-compacted daily or weekly summaries of the most compelling chats. It's a model either way, right?
It may or may not be fraud or false advertising depending on the specific representations made in the particular case and the local fraud and false advertising statutes that apply in the case. So far, I think OF has been successfully in using their ToS to make the case that if it is any of those things, it is fraud or false advertising by the creator. But OF creators, even once you do the work to be able to sue them, are mostly not worth suing, and given the way chatters are more (though not uniquely) associated with creators being working with highly extractive agencies (who are nominally working for the creator, but functionally more like the reverse), that's probably particularly the case for those using chatters.
Last week, I used a dating app where they used a fake profile tailored specifically for me, using a married woman's photo. I deleted the app. Every app in this space is scummy and the people at the top running these are just trash. That's the real reason.
Option one is to use these chatters.
Option two is to chat only with those who pay extra or with no one at all.
Being unable to sell 30 hours of work in a day is normal, not an excuse for fraud.
Did amazon/waymo actually claim they were 100% automated? Moreover is the fact that they're 100% automated a material fact to the consumer? The investors might have grounds to sue for securities fraud, but it's going to be much tougher for a consumer, when for all intents and purposes they got what they expected (ie. whatever they bought from the shop).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
these people probably know they're not talking to the real model, but want someone to talk to.
someone insert Blaise Pascal quote
But this is the basic principle of capitalism. The company exploits workers (in order to obtain a net benefit from their work), and exploits customers (by selling the lowest-quality, most expensive product it can manage to). Companies that don't behave like that get out-competed by companies that do. This dynamic is the root of our economic system, as was very clearly explained by Adam Smith and Karl Marx two centuries ago (in slightly different tones of voice).
The particular case you mention is nothing special. The exact same thing happens for all the products that people buy. This is just the stable state of our (some would say "rotten", some would say "healthy") society.
If the chatter thought the job was so bad, they can quit and get a different one. Millions of people make that choice, it is available to them. There is no requirement that they do this work; it is entirely voluntary. The people doing these jobs have determined that it is the best option for them, personally, or they wouldn’t be there.
PS: $2-4/hr is a more than decent wage in the Philippines. Median income there is $2.11/hr, minimum wage is $1.36/hr.
If you're buying a fancy car and capitalism makes you pay 50% more for the car, calling it exploitation is silly when the communist part of Germany only offers a waiting list for a Trabant. You can't complain about being exploited over luxuries.
This leaves just housing, food, energy, education and healthcare. Other than energy, those things suck in the US, but they are very reasonably priced in Germany.
Marxian exploitation is also incompatible with economic equilibrium, which means that a better solution than communism is to introduce equilibrium into our economies and not just declare equilibrium to be automatic.
Now they are well on the path to automate OnlyFans models themselves, there are plenty of hybrid sites where known live models are attracted with good terms to bring in the users, and then slowly switched for AI ones, and it WORKS.
Adult industry is so competitive and fast-evolving because there are few deep moats, it shows the way for everyone else, in fact.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqrJgjrBV2I (it's a very short video, only 45 seconds)
Scroll down a bit and you'll see all of the images have the exact same face plastered on a clearly AI body and the account is posting new photos multiple times per day.
And every single post has thousands of likes and hundreds of messages from actual humans. People either don't notice the obvious fakes or don't care.
Instagram is similar, you don't need to go far to find extremely obvious AI generated "people" with big accounts and links to OF accounts. There's no way to report these either, because Meta doesn't care.
AI will make this really bad, because it will surely quickly learn how to tap into your deepest impulses and desires for connection and affection. It sounds weird, but in a way, there is some strong correlation between other forms of fraud, the most obvious being romance cons/frauds; where women are not looking for big rods, but for romance lady boners... yet another form of seeing affection.
Some of us harm ourselves for a lack of an affection, others fall prey to it making them vulnerable. I do hope that AI could and will also be used to help people get a semblance of healthy affection, if not maybe even facilitate making real connections that can provide real human affection.
At OnlyFans you're paying for a video feed, and computers are pretty good at producing convincing video feeds now.
We're literally killing our field by making the devices and internet so repulsive that people are actively unplugging. You can't hear about this online because the bot generated content is filling the gap and the people doing it aren't online to tell you about it.
Children are getting addicted to everything because the internet has killed any sense of self-stimulation and they are growing up into gamblers with cards, sports, and prediction markets or rage-addicted media consumers.
There is plenty of human connection to be had out there, it is free, and all you have to do is put down the phone or computer. It is getting extremely compelling as an alternative for increasing large groups of people.
The tech industry is energetically strangling its golden goose.
If you want to directly address this chatter's grievances, the going rate for most chatters is $3+/hour + commissions. I won't share links but this can be found via Telegram or Google. ~$500/mo base is pretty good for the Philippines when call centers make you work 6 days a week for the same price without commission.
I only pay genuine performers, some of whom I even know in person. I only subscribed to the above one because it was a free sub. But I was kinda appalled. First I thought it was a chatbot but it probably was a person like this.
For me the connection is a lot more important than the erotic content. But it's pretty easy to weed them out for now. Maybe this will change with better AI. I hope not.
> OnlyFans, which generated $7.2bn (£5.3bn) revenue in 2024, ..
I didn't expect their revenue to be that high, but I suppose it's also unsurprising.
UK: gambling and porn
Europe: luxury goods
US: advertising and retail e-commerce
China: direct from manufacturer commerce
[1] https://www.comicschau.de/news/fanblast-aloa-me-klengan-krit...
So lets assume $300 per shift, so with an 8 hour shift, that would be about $37.50/hour of merchandise per hour. So the workers makes about 5.3%. Google says standard for sales workers paid on comission normally get 5-10%.
So its possible this is within what would be normal for a low end non-salary commision job, but it depends on what "hundreds" really mean. Of course i think normally for commision only sales jobs you move much more expensive product to make it worth your while.
Otoh they probably deserve a lot higher than normal sales commision given the nature of the job and all the stuff they undoubtedly have to put up with.
The best case scenario you could end with would be that they are not being economically exploited. The worst case scenario would be that they are hopelessly being exploited. The truth seems to be that on a pure economic level they are being exploited about as much as your average low wage worker in capitalism in a poorer country (which is a significant amount of exploitation) but its not quite extreme level of exploitation as the article implies. However, you also have to somehow account for the ickyness/mental affects of the job and its unclear how to do that.
And yes, i believe its important to do the math on human suffering. That is how we make a better world. Not all claims of suffering are equal. The millionaire techbro sad he cant afford a private jet is not sufering in the same way as someone who is struggling to pay for a meal. We distinguish the cases by doing the math.
But the people taking on these jobs are applying for them still. Somehow I find it hard to be sympathetic? Ok I get it the job opportunities in the Philippines aren’t great, but it’s not like you’re being forced to be an OF chatter; you can simply stop being one.
1. AI chatbot 2. A reddit mod type guy
At about the $10-12 mark you'd be able to hire people with serious linguistic skills.
This has never made sense and I'm convinced these "creators" are a front for money laundering.
Perception is definitely slanted in that only the top few percent make the big bucks but I have zero doubt that they make millions
Holy mother of ... the feet business is booming.
I kind of regret studying 3 years of economics ... we studied the rational consumer maximising their utility. Is this what that looks like? (LOL)
If OF managements can't see what's coming, I think it's well deserved.
Hell, there are even cases of only fans models being entirely AI. photo, video and chat entirely made by ai.
I mean at this point you're better getting a chatgpt subscription, right ?
This is skeezy (edit: fixing autocorrect’s sleepy), but then so is chatting with onlyfans models. It’s already a fake, paradoxical relationship and even that aspect is fake. It’s delusions on deceptions.
I did a quick run of the numbers and it is rather hard to tell what the average hourly rate ìs. But it look a like if you went for four 40 hour weeks to get 320 it seems to be a little below the average pay for a call center operator.
In one sense this is a story of someone feeling bad about being paid to do something wrong.
It is not quite so simple when the reason why this happens is the income differential between countries makes it possible for people to be paid enough to put aside their ethics. That becomes easier when the processes is normalised so that they are not the only person making the same compromise.
Adding to the complexity of the situation is the fact that paying people like this puts money into the their economies and that can spur regional development to provide a higher pay level all round, causing the ethically dubious work to become less attractive.
In the very long term the only way to avoid the higher power of foreign weather from doing this is to balance incomes around the world. That requires accepting that the current wealthy countries cannot get cheap things by paying poorer people low wages, and that means having less for themselves.
It’s just a job.
Jobs are not inherently fraudulent, however. A deal is a deal, and this is plainly fraud.
It is unfair to the purchaser, and it is not unfair to the people who voluntarily accept these jobs (when other jobs are obviously available).
Are you saying that jobs are obviously available in this case, or are you saying that it is not unfair under the condition that other jobs are obviously available? That's very different.
Do you imagine this is how the workers feel about it? Do you think they tell their friends "I seduce western men online for pennies an hour" the same way they'd say "I am a waitress?" You can ignore this fact if you wish, but these jobs carry a social stigma and most people would prefer not to role play intimacy with men online if there were another option.
"Sex work is work" is like saying slavery could theoretically be OK under some circumstances (We're all born under legal obligations, how is slavery different etc etc.). A tortured theoretical argument could be made to support either of these, but in reality we know that slavery is unconscionable because of the indignity and brutality of it, regardless of theory. "Sex work" is the same: in reality it is a dangerous and unpleasant job (that overlaps with slavery a lot, incidentally) done mostly be vulnerable women, and that they're often abused and left injured by it. See this article before you go saying prostitution is benign and harmless, this stance is divorced from reality: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficki...
(B) Just because the laws do not explicitly mention it does not make it less of a form of prostitution.
(C) Selling your body regardless of the medium is prostitution.
(D) I am looking at it from a moral perspective. Not legal. Let me know if you think selling your body is not prostitution.
Might as well add 'swearing' to that list.
Pretty much any Wagie job?
For example, someone could compel people who are starving to do all sorts of horrible things for food, and then say 'well, they chose to do it!'.
This salary is over the Philippines minimum wage. It's a legal job like any other.
The people interviewed are not super happy about the content of the job, but none of it seems to be anything more than it being pornography-related.
Nobody's really seeming to cross any lines of illegality as described in the article. This doesn't come close to the kind of conditions faced by Meta's contractors in Africa spying through Meta glasses in private homes.
I would equate this type of job to any type of job that has aspects that some people would never be willing to do.
E.g., I would never be willing to be a window washer. I'm too scared of heights. Same deal with tower construction. But there are plenty of people doing those jobs who don't feel exploited.
The plus side of jobs like this are that you can do this work at home, you can be physically disabled, there's often some level of flexibility of hours, and there's no manual labor.
I'm going to guess that the only scandal here is that the Philippines is 80% Catholic and possibly more conservative than people in the countries where OnlyFans generates its income.
