“I know firsthand how devastating online sexual exploitation can be. I experienced its brutality through live-cam websites similar to OnlyFans, all while maintaining a smile that concealed a reality no consumer of my content could have known. The familiar narrative of the ‘college girl paying her way through her degree’ has long been used to normalize and justify the consumption of sexual content and experiences– an excuse to appease the conscience of those consuming it.”

-Melissa O., Safety Compass Survivor Advisory Council Member

Founded in 2016 by Tim Stokely, a British entrepreneur, OnlyFans was created as a creator driven subscription site. Early on, the site was promoted as a platform for creators like musicians, fitness models, and chefs- however it’s important to note that while this may have been how the website was initially marketed, it wasn’t the first website that Tim Stokely had launched. Previous sites launched by Stokely- GlamWorship, a fetish website, and Customs4U, a website where consumers could order custom pornographic content- focused heavily on explicit content made easily accessible to buyers. According to Forbes, “In 2017, one year after he founded the company with his brother and father… there were around $3 million transactions recorded on OnlyFans.”

By October of 2017, Leonoid Ravinsky, who founded and owned the adult webcam streaming platform MyFreeCams since 2006, bought a majority stake in the new up and coming platform, and within a month had assumed full leadership of OnlyFans. Today, it is estimated that the annual gross revenue from the site has risen to exceed $7.2 billion.

Recently, local media outlets posted an article that referenced a report released by a website claiming that Portland, Oregon is the number 1 city in the world for OnlyFans spending. There have been a few of these types of reports released over the past year from websites that seem like they are sharing credible data, but turn out to be search engines promoting creators on OnlyFans. Many of the results that pop up from these search engines direct to creators who are making pornographic content. 

These claims and related links published by local media were eventually taken down, however this is not the first example of a respected news outlet picking up a report from one of these sites, and then linking to the search engine site who shared the data.