OnlyFans in South Africa: what creators say about sex work, personal safety and the gig economy

The lines between influencer and sex worker have become blurred in the online gig economy. Obi/UnsplashOnlyFans was established in 2016 as a platform for content creators to post images and videos or host live streams in exchange for money. But what began as a small and relatively quiet niche startup suddenly exploded. Global traffic to the site increased by over 90% between November 2019 and October 2020. At the height of the COVID pandemic, when governments all over the world issued stay-at-home orders, OnlyFans was one of the few marketplaces to experience major growth, from 7.5 million registered users to 85 million. In mid-2021, the platform was estimated to be worth over a billion dollars and, by 2026, over three times that. Today OnlyFans is the most popular of many similar sites. In a digital gig economy, creators earn money directly from their fans through monthly subscription fees, tips, and pay-per-view messages. Even though the platform hosts fitness and wellness instructors, music and bands, sports and athletic stars, it is by far best known for its adult content creators. When I began studying OnlyFans in South Africa in 2022, there was growing consensus that it was a digital sex work marketplace. In the global north, it’s been argued that OnlyFans is a prominent example of a “subscription-based pornographic sharing content website”. Academics outline how it has revolutionised the commercial sex work industry by providing a platform for creative independence and professional autonomy. It’s offered greater earning potential compared to other forms of sex work. In the process it has contributed to lessening the stigma of sex work by blurring the lines between traditional pornography and social media influencing. These factors have potentially created a more acceptable career path than sex work in a physical space. But do South African OnlyFans creators even identify as sex workers? Read more: Student sex work is happening, and universities need to respond with health services It’s one of the questions that I asked them as a social scientist in the course of my PhD research on OnlyFans use in South Africa as an example of platform labour in the gig economy. My work explores the meanings that attach to the body when young people use digital media to curate alternative realities for themselves that might help them reclaim agency and redefine their self-image. I found that many South African OnlyFans creators do not identify as sex workers; they prefer to distinguish themselves from physical sex workers or from creators who also do in-person hook-ups. They manage online stigma by using pseudonyms. Even though they face piracy and extortion, they avoid taking legal action for fear of being judged. Yet they are able to achieve moderate long-term income and some stability in a country with high youth unemployment. They do this by blending entrepreneurial skills and digital savvy to operate independently, and by constantly balancing online competition, algorithms and personal pressures to do their work. Labouring on digital sexual spaces How sex work happens cannot be separated from its legal status. While sex work is technically criminal in South Africa, platforms like OnlyFans are able to operate legally. In 1996, the country’s Films and Publications Act decriminalised the creation and distribution of sexually explicit or sexually suggestive content. I write about South Africans on OnlyFans as “labouring on digital sexual spaces”. This is a marketplace that blurs the “illegality” of sex work but also legitimises the labour that goes into creating content. This labour includes, among other things, cultivating an audience, most often by using social media; managing relationships with collaborators; the admin of processing requests; and managing the reputational damage risk of being outed as a sex worker. Instead of merely stating “sex work is work”, my research identifies the labour processes that differentiate digital sex work from traditional sex work. This is done to argue for how labouring on digital sexual spaces is a legitimate form of platform and gig economy work. The study Media articles signalled the existence of South Africans who were creating content for OnlyFans, but there was an absence of research on their experiences on the platform. So, I shared a call for participants on social media and allowed people to volunteer to be part of the research by contacting me via email. At the same time, participants were recruited by word of mouth. Reflecting South Africa’s demographics, many of the 17 participants who ended up sharing their lived experiences were Black women below the age of 35. What I found In part of my research, I set out to understand how OnlyFans creators see themselves and their peers who labour in a platform that gained notoriety for hosting sexually explicit or sexually suggestive content. While some creators proudly embrace the label of sex worker, many others reject it. Creators’ self-perceptions generally fall into two categories. The first, as adult content creators. They see their work as a form of media production, like art or performance, rather than a sexual service. For these individuals, this moral distinction is about not having physical sexual contact with the audience. This allows them to choose when and how they work. They compare their choice with what they see as survival-dependency of street-based sex workers. At the same time, other creators proudly identify as sex workers. They view the term as an umbrella for anyone in the business of pleasure, and further believe that selling sex and arousal through audiovisual mediums is fundamentally still sex work. The judgment of hook-ups by the former is then framed as an instance of “intra-industry stigma” (judgments within a line of work). Regardless of the label they choose – sex worker or adult content creator – they all anticipate stigma and have experienced it in their lives. Being an OnlyFans creator comes with social judgments from others. They also all make use of stage names, pseudonyms and online alter egos. This functions as a psychological buffer, allowing them to perform confidently while keeping their authentic selves separate from the job. A major hurdle is telling their family and intimate partners that they work as OnlyFans creators. If they do, they might tell family members they are posting “body art” or compare OnlyFans to platforms like Instagram. Intimate partners often place boundaries on what content can be made. Read more: South Africa’s gig economy workers set to get more protection under planned labour law reforms There are other significant obstacles. While using watermarking (their user names are superimposed on their images), they are still highly vulnerable to their content being pirated and distributed on other platforms like Telegram or WhatsApp. They also live with the threat of cyber extortion. Stolen content might be used to blackmail creators, with threats of leaking it to their friends and family. Yet none of the participants in my study felt safe to approach the police or lawyers to punish cyber bullying, extortion, stalking or harassment. This has an impact on their occupational health and safety. What needs to happen While digital platforms like OnlyFans offer financial freedom and sexual agency, the environment for South Africa’s creators remains dangerous. Decriminalising and properly regulating sex work could help ease some of these pressures. Understanding the vulnerabilities of digital sex workers can help guide policy initiatives to make digital sexual spaces safer work environments. From my study it’s clear that there also needs to be a concerted effort to develop educational resources that promote digital literacy and ethical online behaviour. Phiwokazi Qoza does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

OnlyFans in South Africa: what creators say about sex work, personal safety and the gig economy

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