How OnlyFans became a world empire with an Irish CEO

OnlyFans is on a mission to redefine porn.

With €1.25 billion in income and over 300 million customers, the fast-growing firm has fused intercourse work with the web creator financial system so efficiently that it has branched out into comedy, music and motor-racing.

However for all its ambition and affect, the interior workings of OnlyFans stay opaque.

It has only a few dozen staff whilst its consumer base has nearly quadrupled in recent times. Its billionaire proprietor is never seen in public and even talked about in talks by its chief govt. There’s no firm signal outdoors its registered London handle, and a big however secretive a part of its operations – together with content material moderation – relies in Ukraine, a rustic at struggle.

Reuters traced OnlyFans’ journey from an obscure, porn-free web site created by a British household to an adults-only social media phenomenon turbocharged by erotic performers and celeb influencers, price billions of {dollars}.

Because it’s grown, OnlyFans has sought to make use of specific content material – its seemingly bottomless income – as a springboard to higher scale, positioning itself as a tech pioneer with a spot amongst social media giants reminiscent of Instagram and X.

Key to that effort is making porn extra socially acceptable and distancing the corporate from the abuses usually related to the business.

The general public face of OnlyFans is CEO Keily Blair, an Irish lawyer and self-described feminist and “security nerd” promoted to the highest job in 2023.

In public appearances, Blair (42) presents the platform as profitable and empowering, significantly for ladies, and infrequently mentions her two daughters. “I need them to have an excellent on-line life,” she informed delegates at a UK child-protection convention in 2023. “I need the identical to your youngsters.”

Individuals flock to OnlyFans, she says, as a result of it affords “moral” porn – though she prefers to not use what she calls the “P-word.”

However the P-word drives the enterprise. Creators sometimes earn a living from subscribers by posting porn and chatting with them on-line. Created in 2016, OnlyFans says it has paid out over €19 billion to its creators, who now quantity 4.1 million. The corporate takes a 20 per cent lower of creators’ income.

OnlyFans didn’t reply to requests to interview Blair or the corporate’s proprietor, Leonid Radvinsky. The corporate and its father or mother, Fenix Worldwide Ltd, didn’t reply to most questions for this story.

This account of the corporate’s rise relies on interviews with greater than a dozen individuals with direct data of OnlyFans’ operations, together with dozens of creators, former creators, and consultants within the porn business, content material moderation and on-line security. Reporters additionally reviewed company filings, court docket information, web sites and speeches associated to OnlyFans and its key employees.

OnlyFans pledges publicly that it’s constructing “the most secure social media platform on the earth.” It operates behind tens of millions of creator paywalls, nevertheless, which make this declare nearly unattainable to independently assess.

These paywalls can disguise severe hurt. In a sequence of investigations revealed this 12 months, Reuters examined police and court docket information that documented a number of circumstances of sexual slavery, youngster sexual abuse materials, and nonconsensual or “revenge” porn on OnlyFans between 2019 and 2024.

OnlyFans says it prohibits youngster sexual abuse materials and “trendy slavery,” together with intercourse trafficking, and removes illicit content material as quickly as it’s detected. The corporate additionally has stated it invests closely in content material moderation, vetting “all the pieces” on the location, and works intently with legislation enforcement globally to help their investigations.

Radvinsky, the proprietor Blair not often mentions in public, purchased OnlyFans in 2018 and is its sole shareholder. Now 42 years outdated, he has paid himself not less than a billion {dollars} in dividends over the previous three years, company filings present.

For a head of a well-known firm, he’s little recognized.

Even with specialised search instruments, Reuters might discover solely six completely different photographs of Radvinsky on-line. Of 4 web sites that seem to belong to him, just one mentions OnlyFans by title; none reveals that porn is a serious supply of his fortune.

As a substitute, they describe him as an angel investor and philanthropist who dedicates “an enormous period of time, effort and cash to non-profit causes.”

Fish and chips and porn

Radvinsky cashed in on OnlyFans. However he didn’t create it.

That was British businessman Tim Stokely, a local of Essex, a county northeast of London. As a schoolboy, Stokely’s “first entrepreneurial endeavor” was charging classmates to gather their orders from a neighborhood fish and chips store, in accordance with an archived model of timstokely.com, a private web site.

However as an grownup, it was porn that made Stokely wealthy – after a few false begins.

In 2011, he launched Glam Worship a fetish web site that allowed customers to ship items and cash to dominatrixes. Slogan: “Your new dependancy.” A 12 months or two later, he unveiled Customs4U, the place ladies uploaded customized porn movies for paying prospects.

Each ventures failed. Stokely tried once more. After an inspirational chat with associates, in accordance with timstokely.com, he got down to create a web site “that made it straightforward for all creators to monetize their content material” – in different phrases, a social media platform with a pay button.

That platform was OnlyFans.

“The crew hit the bottom working, pulling late hours to bootstrap the corporate: From writing code to create a minimal, easy-to-use interface to personally messaging early adopters,” Stokely’s web site stated.

Stokely’s household – described as “very close-knit” by the web site – performed a central function. OnlyFans launched in 2016 with Tim as CEO and, by 12 months’s finish, his dad and mom Man and Deborah as administrators. His brother Tom turned chief working officer in 2018.

One other of the early administrators of OnlyFans was Petra, a self-described silent associate within the enterprise who spoke on situation her surname be withheld. An American citizen dwelling within the Netherlands, Petra labored for the porn web site FreeOnes and was an professional in elevating the visibility of internet sites on search engines like google and yahoo. She stated her major job was to drive site visitors to OnlyFans. “It was by no means meant to be a porn web site, although,” she stated.

Initially, OnlyFans’ phrases of service banned specific content material. Petra stated the corporate had hoped to draw musicians and influencers from YouTube and Instagram, however couldn’t get sufficient of them .

“So we simply determined to return with what we all know,” she stated. “And that’s grownup.”

By the tip of 2017, OnlyFans had lifted its ban on porn – and the platform took off.

To develop within the US, stated Petra, the Stokelys relied on Invoice Fox, a outstanding determine in California’s porn business. Fox recruited dozens of grownup performers to affix OnlyFans, she stated. They have been recognized on the firm as “Invoice’s Ladies,” two former contractors informed Reuters. Whereas Fox in California supplied the A-list performers, the Stokelys made the enterprise selections in England, stated the contractors, and the corporate expanded quickly and chaotically.

Former Thai-British porn star Keni Types, who labored for OnlyFans within the early years, stated the corporate’s path was a matter of fierce debate. He recalled one Skype assembly, round 2018, descending right into a yelling match between Fox and Tim Stokely.

“Invoice wished it to be only a straight-up grownup porn web site. Tim had this imaginative and prescient that he was going to problem Fb, he was going to problem Instagram. He was going to carry mainstream YouTube content-creators to OnlyFans.”

Tim, Tom and their dad and mom couldn’t be reached for remark. Invoice Fox died in 2019.

The objective wasn’t to carry onto OnlyFans long-term, Petra stated. “We wished a undertaking that we might principally go off and promote,” she stated.

In 2018, a purchaser appeared: Radvinsky. How a lot he paid for OnlyFans has by no means been disclosed.

Enter Leo

The brand new proprietor was media-shy and socially awkward, stated three individuals who’ve met him – very in contrast to Stokely, whose Instagram account brims with pictures of quick vehicles, porn stars and villas in Ibiza.

Radvinsky introduced a wealth of expertise within the quickly evolving enterprise of on-line porn.

As a boy, within the dying years of the Soviet Union, he and his dad and mom left Ukraine for the US. He grew up in Illinois, the place his first firm, Cybertania Inc, was registered by his mom, Anna, in March 1999, in accordance with firm filings. Radvinsky was then solely 16.

His mom couldn’t be reached for remark.

Radvinsky would describe Cybertania’s enterprise in a 2014 court docket declaration as “on-line leisure.” One in every of its earliest ventures was a web site referred to as Ultrapasswords.com, which promised hyperlinks to porn-related web sites, in accordance with a 2021 story by Forbes.

It was a profitable enterprise. A court docket submitting by Cybertania stated Ultrapasswords was producing earnings of about $5,000 per day in 2002 – the identical 12 months Radvinsky turned 20. The positioning is not lively.

Two years later, with an economics diploma from Northwestern College outdoors Chicago, Radvinsky began his first large porn enterprise: MyFreeCams, the place fashions carried out sexual acts on a stay webcam feed. Viewers paid by the minute or purchased digital tokens to tip the performer.

By 2010, XBIZ, a information outlet for the porn business, was calling MyFreeCams “one of many world’s largest grownup webcam communities,” with 100,000 fashions on its books. It’s nonetheless round at the moment and owned by Radvinsky’s US-based MFCXY, Inc.

MyFreeCams was a part of a wave of “cam websites” that capitalized on quicker web speeds. They marked a serious shift in porn, which till the early 2000s was primarily made by studio-based performers and distributed on videotape, and later CDs and DVDs, or through pay-per-view TV.

Then got here so-called “tube websites” within the mid-2000s. These web sites did not produce their very own porn however supplied a platform for content material uploaded by customers – professionals and amateurs alike. Websites reminiscent of Xtube, Pornhub and xHamster, which attracted lots of of tens of millions of customers, primarily made cash by adverts and by promoting consumer knowledge. Customers bought limitless content material at no cost.

“Porn was extra accessible than ever earlier than, however performers have been making much less and fewer cash off of it,” stated Maggie MacDonald, a doctoral candidate on the College of Toronto who research porn platforms. For the subsequent decade, because the tube websites dominated web porn, many performers struggled.

“After which OnlyFans comes alongside,” stated MacDonald, an adviser to the non-public fairness agency that owns Aylo, Pornhub’s father or mother firm.

Below Radvinsky, Tim Stokely stayed on as CEO for the subsequent three years, along with his brother Tom as chief working officer and their father Man, a former service provider banker, as a co-director with Radvinsky.

The corporate’s fortunes soared with the Covid-19 pandemic and its lockdowns.

Hundreds of thousands of remoted, sexy individuals flocked to porn websites. OnlyFans noticed a surge in creators, customers and income within the US and Europe, its major markets. Between 2019 and 2021, its pretax earnings rose from $5.6 million (€5.37 million) to $432.9 million (€415 million), in accordance with company filings.

Though free porn was available on-line, OnlyFans appeared to supply one thing completely different that individuals would pay for: private connection. Subscribers might immediately message creators, and search companionship and intimacy. Creators made cash by subscriptions, suggestions and gross sales of custom-made content material.

OnlyFans supplied its creators an alluring mixture of gig work, sexual expression and monetary freedom – and, for some influencers, a uncommon probability to transform large social media followings into small fortunes, as long as they have been keen to strip off.

One creator who reaped enormous earnings is Danielle Bregoli, a rebellious teen who turned well-known for her 2016 TV look along with her mom on Dr. Phil. In a phase titled, “I Wish to Give Up My Automotive-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-12 months-Previous Daughter Who Tried to Body Me for a Crime,” she taunted the viewers to battle her outdoors: “Money me outdoors, how bout dah?” The catchphrase launched her profession because the chart-topping rapper Bhad Bhabie, gaining her tens of millions of followers on social media.

In April 2021, six days after her 18th birthday, she created an OnlyFans account, posting sexually suggestive photographs. Within the first six hours, she earned greater than $1 million, Bregoli informed Reuters. A 12 months later, that sum had reached nearly $42 million, she stated.

“I had no thought it will make this sort of cash,” she stated. “No person did.”

Whereas high creators cashed in, others scraped by. “It’s extremely uncommon that you simply converse to somebody who’s making a great deal of cash,” stated Hanne Stegeman, whose doctoral analysis on the College of Amsterdam targeted on the experiences of on-line intercourse staff, together with OnlyFans creators. “Far more usually individuals are working fairly exhausting to make one thing just like a minimal wage.”

Roxie Roots, a former OnlyFans creator from Germany who joined OnlyFans in 2018 and left in 2021, discovered the work more durable – and the earnings a lot smaller – than she’d anticipated.

“I saved going for years as a result of I used to be like, Oh my God, I want to return out with one thing – not less than some financial savings,” she stated.

‘Large explosion in content material’

One former worker had a ringside view of what he referred to as the “huge explosion of content material” through the pandemic years. Zak Hembry joined OnlyFans in 2019 and labored as a content material moderator from his dwelling in Bishop’s Stortford, north of London.

Content material was screened by a “programmable bot” that flagged suspect materials for human moderators to evaluate, Hembry stated. He scanned this materials for illicit content material, which was then blocked or eliminated. “I’ve seen all types of issues I want I hadn’t seen on there,” he stated, together with content material that includes youngsters, animals or feces, in addition to a creator who was “overeating on objective.”

In its early years, stated Hembry, OnlyFans took a “zero-tolerance” method to creators who broke its guidelines. However as content material flooded in underneath Radvinsky’s possession, high earners have been handled extra leniently, stated Hembry and one other former contractor within the US.

These whose accounts might need been shut down previously started to obtain warnings as a substitute, Hembry stated.

As an illustration, he stated he as soon as suspended an account exhibiting an incestuous sexual encounter between grownup twins – violating OnlyFans’ phrases of service. Later, he stated, he was exasperated to see that somebody above him had reactivated the account.

“Why do you have to give them one other probability?” he stated. Hembry concluded that “cash was extra vital” at OnlyFans than guidelines. The previous US contractor agreed; creators who made tens of millions of {dollars} for the platform might “add regardless of the hell they need,” she stated.

By 2021, Hembry stated he knew of greater than a dozen individuals within the UK who labored as OnlyFans moderators.

Confronted with exponential development, OnlyFans turned to staff from Ukraine, Radvinsky’s homeland, which had a well-developed IT business, former staff and contractors stated. By February 2022, when Russia launched its all-out invasion, OnlyFans had a “enormous crew” in Ukraine doing content material moderation and different capabilities, CEO Keily Blair stated in a current speech on the Bother Membership in London, which hosts talks by outstanding ladies.

A few of these staff have been recruited by a agency referred to as StopFraud, in accordance with 4 individuals who beforehand labored at StopFraud or OnlyFans. One Ukrainian ex-moderator employed by StopFraud shared with Reuters a cost receipt exhibiting she was paid by OnlyFans.

StopFraud is sort of untraceable. It describes itself as a “fast-growing, US-based firm” in adverts posted on a Ukrainian jobs web site, however Reuters might discover no enterprise registration for it within the US, the UK or Ukraine. The agency couldn’t be reached for remark.

OnlyFans doesn’t publicly acknowledge any relationship with StopFraud, and StopFraud’s web site doesn’t point out OnlyFans. A number of former StopFraud staff informed Reuters they knew little about their employer. They labored from dwelling, moderating content material and vetting creators. They knew their colleagues solely by nickname. One stated the clandestine situations made her really feel like a “spy.” Others declined interviews, saying that they had signed nondisclosure agreements.

Hembry stated his UK-based content-moderation crew was phased out as Ukrainian contractors took over, and he briefly moved to a job dealing with relations with high creators. However he might nonetheless verify the queue the place content material awaited evaluate, he stated. Simply earlier than he was laid off in 2022, he stated, the queue contained tens of millions of things – not less than 50 occasions the conventional load he had seen the 12 months earlier than. He stated he couldn’t see how the Ukrainian contractors would get the job completed. It’s unclear how the struggle affected their work. After it broke out, Blair has stated, OnlyFans relocated “a lot of individuals” from Ukraine to neighbouring Poland.

By 2022, OnlyFans publicly stated it was constructing “the world’s most secure social media platform.” In July that 12 months, it informed Ofcom, the British media regulator, that whereas it relied on automation to flag issues, all content material was finally reviewed by a human moderator.

At a web site with OnlyFans’ quantity of content material, that process was “nearly unattainable” with out hiring “hundreds of moderators,” stated Jason Pomales, former director of belief and security at Vimeo, a outstanding video-sharing platform. “And that’s an enormous value.”

4 different content material moderation consultants agreed that OnlyFans’ declare of blanket human evaluate was implausible. In November alone, the web site stated it uploaded nearly 55 million items of content material.

OnlyFans’ moderation course of, in the meantime, stays murky. It says 80 per cent of its workforce consists of “educated content material moderators,” however the firm doesn’t expose publicly the scale of that workforce or how moderators are educated. That makes OnlyFans’ claims concerning the effectiveness of its moderation troublesome for outsiders to confirm.

Ofcom has collected details about moderation and different enterprise operations immediately from OnlyFans. A few of that data – together with the platform’s moderation staffing ranges – hasn’t been revealed, Ofcom stated, as a result of the legislation restricts what it could actually disclose with out the consent of the companies it regulates. Nonetheless, a spokesperson added: “It is our present understanding that each piece of content material (on OnlyFans) is finally moderated by a human.”

Nervous banks

As OnlyFans’ reputation grew, unlawful content material was slipping by its moderators. Individuals have been complaining to police of abuses on the platform. The BBC had discovered youngsters on the location. And OnlyFans’ bankers appeared nervous.

In August 2021, the corporate dropped a bombshell announcement: it will ban porn as of that October. Providing few particulars, the corporate stated it was looking for to adjust to requests from banking companions and cost suppliers. In an interview with the Monetary Instances, Tim Stokely blamed “unfair” therapy by banks that had flagged and rejected OnlyFans funds to its creators because of reputational threat.

The proposed ban outraged porn creators. Many felt betrayed. Lauren Phillips, an American creator who joined OnlyFans early on, stated she felt like the corporate wished “to make use of us after which throw us away.”

Six days later, OnlyFans abruptly retracted the ban, saying it had secured the “assurances obligatory” to help its creators. It didn’t clarify what these assurances have been or who gave them. However eradicating porn would have crippled the platform – and lower off a rising stream of income for the banks dealing with OnlyFans’ enterprise.

Nonetheless, it remained an uphill wrestle to persuade potential banking companions that porn on OnlyFans wasn’t a smokescreen for abuse, some bankers stated.

Within the spring of 2023, intermediaries for OnlyFans spoke with a number of Wall Road funding banks to discover the opportunity of partnerships, in accordance with three individuals concerned. One stated taking OnlyFans public was mentioned; the others informed Reuters that the intermediaries have been looking for main banks to assist course of funds for OnlyFans.

By then, OnlyFans had eye-popping numbers: over a billion {dollars} in income, over half a billion in working revenue. Bankers would have sometimes fought for such enterprise. However the talks went nowhere. The hitch, in accordance with two of these concerned, was OnlyFans’ major product: porn.

Porn makes OnlyFans untouchable for a lot of large banks and buyers, stated six bankers, attorneys and different buyers, all with experience in capital markets however no ties to OnlyFans, who spoke with Reuters on situation they and their employers not be named. 4 expressed concern that any due diligence completed on the platform would possibly discover unlawful content material reminiscent of youngster sexual abuse materials, trafficking victims and nonconsensual porn.

OnlyFans has since stated it has no plans to go public. Enterprise is booming. In 2023, content material creators generated $6.6 billion on the platform. The corporate had greater than sufficient free money move to stay privately held. Its dividend payout of $472 million to Radvinsky was greater than Ralph Lauren earned from the style firm he based and Nike co-founder Phil Knight earned from the sportswear big – mixed.

As a reclusive porn mogul, Radvinsky isn’t often talked about in the identical breath because the world’s eminent billionaires. However he has instructed he would really like it to be.

“My objective is to sooner or later be ready to signal The Giving Pledge,” he says on one web site that seems to belong to him, referring to guarantees made by Invoice Gates, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg and different tycoons to provide away most of their wealth to charitable causes.

Rebuffed by Wall Road, OnlyFans continued its efforts to develop into a mainstream firm, looking for to persuade the world that its porn was secure – and that OnlyFans was greater than a porn web site.

That job fell to its CEO, Keily Blair.

‘Moral’ porn

At her earlier function as a lawyer with the legislation agency Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, Blair stated she specialised in cybersecurity and on-line privateness. At the least three different Orrick employees have gone to work for OnlyFans, an Orrick shopper.

At OnlyFans, Blair presents herself because the folksy, straight-talking chief of an organization with mainstream enchantment.

“We additionally host plenty of different content material,” she stated in March on the SXSW convention in Austin, Texas, citing sports activities, comedy and music. OnlyFans additionally affords safe-for-work content material on OFTV, a streaming platform it launched in 2021.

OnlyFans says it doesn’t even monitor how a lot porn it sells, lumping it in financially with all its different choices. “We don’t categorise our creators by the content material they produce so we don’t know what quantity are creating grownup content material,” an organization spokesperson informed Reuters final 12 months. Blair has publicly dismissed the declare that the majority OnlyFans content material is porn, with out offering a determine of her personal.

She additionally says the porn on OnlyFans is completely different from different websites. On the SXSW convention, which says it showcases “innovative concepts,” she defined how OnlyFans allowed grownup performers to flee the “exploitative” studio system and immediately revenue from the content material they produced. This “moral” grownup content material, she stated, was what drew so many subscribers to OnlyFans.

“I’m a feminist,” Blair informed her viewers on the Bother Membership in August. “My feminism helps to tell why I do that job.”

Some see Blair’s appointment as a wily PR transfer for OnlyFans.

In a current LinkedIn publish, Elly Hanson, a scientific psychologist who focuses on stopping sexual abuse, questioned whether or not a male CEO would “be repeatedly invited into societal boards to wax lyrical about ‘empowerment,’ ‘authenticity’ and ‘feminism’ with out sturdy problem and debate? In fact not.”

Kim Swallows, an American creator who joined OnlyFans in 2017, stated OnlyFans is downplaying the contributions of the porn creators whose exhausting work made it so wealthy.

“I really feel like they’re undoubtedly attempting to sanitize their picture,” she stated.

Different present and former creators additionally questioned how empowering OnlyFans was for ladies. Roots, the previous creator from Germany, stated the platform drew younger, probably weak ladies into the porn enterprise however supplied no recommendation on dealing with its calls for and lasting impression.

Producing and selling content material was relentless and punishing, and male prospects wished to “use you for his or her gratification,” she stated. “It’s very troublesome to name this feminist.”

Sophia Mayy (27), a creator from England, stated she joined OnlyFans in 2021 to make “a bit of additional pocket cash” and now brings dwelling about £35,000 (€42,000) a month. “I truthfully wouldn’t look again,” she informed Reuters.

Even so, says Mayy, it’s a mistake for OnlyFans to deal with porn similar to some other content material – due to the dangers concerned in producing it. In her case, she stated, the job has broken her relations with household and associates, and compelled her to deal with loneliness, lengthy hours and abusive male subscribers.

“Most likely the most important factor of all is the psychological toll it takes on you,” she stated. “You might be seen as an object, you’re seen as a chunk of meat.”