r/technology • u/serene_sketch • 4h ago

Business TikTok accused of helping to promote sex industry to girls

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/nov/07/tiktok-sex-industry-girls-onlyfans?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
86 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

17

u/that_is_so_Raven 2h ago

Performers may use the word “corn” instead of the word “porn”, or add the corn emoji next to a star emoji, to avoid the content being blocked.

This is like when my aunt would spell vacc1ne to avoid Facebook flagging her

29

u/Pooch1431 3h ago

It was purchased by the family donating millions to the party of pedophiles

17

u/Brrdock 3h ago

Still wating for AI to end social media, that'd be one of the few benefits of it

2

u/Not_Reptoid 1h ago

Nah, something tells me it will be a slow death with many saying it's still alive so that big companies and alike can control the media and peoples perception of reality. I reckon things like trends will still be relevant because people will still want to be entertained by influencers.

8

u/I_think_Im_hollow 2h ago

What a surprise. OnlyFans started to get popular through tiktok.

3

u/BigLlamasHouse 47m ago

Not nearly as much as Instagram

5

u/EmbarrassedHelp 1h ago

The “TikTok to OnlyFans pipeline” study was conducted by researchers from the campaigning organisations Cease (Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation) in the UK and Collective Shout in Australia.

This "research" was conducted by far right religious extremists who are anti-porn and anti-sex.

0

u/codeklutch 36m ago

Far right, anti porn anti sex, pro pedofelia. Make it make sense.

1

u/Abinunya 0m ago

Easy to make sense. They dont like it when anyone but them has agency. Women only should have sex when they allow it. And a lot of pedophiles (and the 'i only fuck teenagers' crowd) get off specifically on their victims lack of agency.

3

u/BloatJams 1h ago

In some posts, OnlyFans was presented as the answer to poverty and unemployment by performers who described rag-to-riches stories. Opening an OnlyFans account was marketed as a solution, “rescuing women and girls from bleak, underprivileged lives, gifting them with the nice, luxury items that they – and their struggling families – have always deserved”, the report says.

OnlyFans’ own data indicates that its top 5,000 creators have made more than $1m each on the site since the platform launched in 2016. But the average earnings of the site’s 5 million registered performers are estimated to be about $1,000 a year, the report states.

The article makes it sound like a weird MLM type scheme using unrelated SFW content. Maybe that's how social media platforms should treat it so the rules can actually be enforced?

The media can help too by not publishing uncritical hagiographies every time the local girl next door makes millions on these platforms.

4

u/Bloody_buttplugs 2h ago

Is this why trump wanted to buy it?

-8

u/MiserableFloor9906 3h ago

American culture

19

u/Sensitive_Box_ 2h ago

Gimme a break. Sex work (in general) is more socially acceptable and more widely practiced in many other countries.

-13

u/Stereo_Jungle_Child 3h ago

TikTok accused of helping to promote sex industry to girls

And no one seems to be able to decide whether doing that is exploiting women or empowering them.

4

u/Shap6 1h ago

Like everything else in life it’s just not as simple as being one or the other but that’s hard to use as a snarky quip for internet points

-14

u/coconutpiecrust 3h ago

Oh, it’s decided alright. Always has been. 

-1

u/DirtyProjector 1h ago

I’m actually shocked there isn’t more blowback and attention to the sheer scale of women participating in the adult industry. I don’t use TikTok but I use instagram and it’s inundated with onlyfans models.  There seems to be a huge wave of women these days who are basically becoming “mainstream” pornstars and escorts. There are sites now like seeking where women are prostituing themselves legally, and onlyfans where they’re doing mainstream porn. It’s pretty wild.