If the site founded in 2016 in the United Kingdom highlights its cooking or music lessons as much as its adult content, it is the latter - photos and videos - that make the success of the platform to 180 million users. users and some 2 million creators, numbers that exploded during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Everyone on the platform is an adult," New Onlyfans leader Amrapali Gan said on Wednesday, speaking at the Web Summit in Lisbon, insisting on strict age and identity controls. implemented for several months.

"What's interesting about Onlyfans is the freedom. We control what we do, it's independent, not mainstream porn. We do what we like, what we want to do, which our subscribers also want", explained to AFP Kny Vy, X actress and former video game streamer, member of a commission of the French sex work union (Strass) dedicated to platforms.

Onlyfans takes a 20% commission on subscriptions of a few tens of euros that "fans" take out to access or order content from creators.

Since its creation, the site would have donated more than 10 billion dollars, indicated its leader.

For Kny Vy, who has invested in professional filming equipment and has a large community, these incomes vary between 600 and 3,500 euros per month, but they are much lower for the majority of creators.

"Sexual Exploitation"

"The more content you publish, the more your subscribers adhere to your pages. It's like on Instagram", explains one of them, who defines herself as "libertine" and also has her own site to distribute her content. , carried out as a "hobby" alongside another professional activity.

According to her, Onlyfans offers both payment facilities to fans and "a more secure framework" than traditional porn industry studios for actresses, which allows them "to refuse practices that they do not want. to do".

But the development of the platform and competing sites like the French MYM "encourages the idea that selling photos of your body helps you make ends meet. It necessarily encourages prostitution", judge Sandrine Goldschmidt, representative of the Mouvement du Nid, an abolitionist association.

And even without physical contact, this "commodification of bodies" is similar, according to her, to "sexual exploitation".

"Many young victims of prostitution began by posting their ads on the Onlyfans site," said Bérengère Wallaert, general delegate of the association Acting for the Protection of Children (ACPE), who considers that Onlyfans facilitates the in relation to vulnerable young girls with clients or pimps.

"Nothing happens on Onlyfans without us knowing about it," defended Amrapali Gan on Wednesday during the Web Summit.

"Every content (photo, video and private message) is moderated", both by an automatic system and "by a human", she added.

Onlyfans had tried last year to ban sexual content, a move interpreted as an attempt to reassure investors before a potential IPO.

But the site had finally given up in the face of the rebellion of the creators and had explained that it had obtained the support of banks and payment operators, who threatened to cut ties.

"We are a private company. We are not taking any steps for an IPO," said its leader on Wednesday.

© 2022 AFP