Key facts
- Researchers said performers hid coded references to pornography in lifestyle videos about shopping, pets, baking and skincare.
- The report says performers used the word "corn" or the corn emoji beside a star emoji to evade content blocking.
- OnlyFans' own data indicates its top 5,000 creators have made more than $1 million each since 2016, per the report.
- The report estimates average earnings of OnlyFans' 5 million registered performers at about $1,000 a year.
- Collective Shout's Melinda Tankard Reist called TikTok an "industrial-scale digital pimp funnelling girls into the sex industry".
- TikTok said it strictly prohibits sexual content and designs systems to keep age-inappropriate content from teens.
TikTok is helping to promote and normalize the sex industry by letting popular OnlyFans performers post videos that point viewers toward pornographic content sold elsewhere, according to a report by campaigning organizations Cease, or the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation, in the UK and Collective Shout in Australia.
Researchers spent months scrolling through posts by a number of key "sexfluencers" and following recommendations from TikTok's algorithm, studying non-explicit content posted over the course of a year. They said the women buried coded references to pornography in "girly lifestyle content" showing them shopping, playing with pets, baking or offering skincare advice. Mentioning OnlyFans or linking to it from TikTok accounts is prohibited, so performers used euphemisms, emojis and crude gestures instead, such as the word "corn" or the corn emoji beside a star emoji.
The report describes a "TikTok to OnlyFans pipeline" in which performers build followings through "get ready with me" videos and then direct viewers to paid adult content. It says viral posts told followers about money earned from selling sexual content, often with images of cash, big houses, private jets and expensive cars, and presented OnlyFans as an escape from poverty and unemployment.
OnlyFans' own data indicates its top 5,000 creators have made more than $1 million each since the platform launched in 2016, the report states, while average earnings of its 5 million registered performers are estimated at about $1,000 a year.
Melinda Tankard Reist of Collective Shout condemned TikTok as "an industrial-scale digital pimp funnelling girls into the sex industry" and said young women and girls deserve protection from "a predatory industry grooming them to be producers of explicit content." She said the research was commissioned after OnlyFans stars such as Sophie Rain and Ari Kytsya drew large TikTok followings among teenage girls. Rain became known through content filmed at the Bop House, a pornography production house in Miami whose auditions are shared on TikTok.
The report's authors called for extending bans in many countries on showing explicit pornography to under-18s so they also cover posts that promote or relate to the sex industry. A TikTok spokesperson said the platform strictly prohibits sharing or showing sexual content and uses advanced technologies to enforce its guidelines, with systems designed to keep age-inappropriate content from teens. An OnlyFans spokesperson said the platform is for people aged 18 and over and has strict onboarding processes to prevent minors accessing it.