JOANI REID, MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven, yesterday (3 September) used a parliamentary debate to pile pressure on what she calls the “pimping empire” of OnlyFans.
OnlyFans is a British based company that reportedly made $6 billion last year and is by far the largest “pornography prostitution” website in the world. Pornography-prostitution is the fusion of the pornography industry and the sex trade into one system: the buying, selling and consumption of sexual access to women, filmed, uploaded and monetised as entertainment. Whilst not every user of OnlyFans publishes or seeks pornography, the overwhelming majority of its “content providers” and its users are engaged in pay-to-play online pornography which amounts to little more than web-enabled prostitution.
As OnlyFans content is hidden behind pay walls it is all but impossible for outsiders to verify its claims that all its content providers are aged over-18. And with content generated to satisfy the demands of individual payers the drive towards dangerous, violent and abuse practices is not even hidden in advertisements for content.
Joani Reid MP said:
“OnlyFans claims to have zero tolerance of child abuse, but we know of dozens of cases where law enforcement have detected child abuse material being hosted on the site, even though all content is hidden behind paywalls. In one case images of a 16-year-old girl were generating money for abusers for more than a year and the material was only withdrawn after the news agency Reuters started asking about it.
“The reality is OnlyFans is a playground for child sexual abuse and violence against women.
“And OnlyFans is exploiting their content providers to make billions. A few women at the top of the tree of providers are making money and are being glamourised in the media, but the reality is that the average women makes £4 a month. The only winners here are the people who own the company.
“OnlyFans cannot be treated as just another social media provider. In my view they are abuse enablers and need to be dealt with firmly. If they refuse to take their paywalls down for regulators then I believe we should clobber their profits in any way we can.
“Ultimately, though, the solution is to change our laws on prostitution in a fundamental way. Chasing after the women while letting the men walk free is simply letting exploiters off the hook. In future the law should target the men who make the abuse happen by paying for it and leave the victims alone.
“That might not be agreed today in response to my debate, but this is the start of a campaign, and it won’t stop until a fundamental transformation has been delivered.”
