Onlyfans and Piracy

I'm curious to know how Onlyfans has managed to thrive in the era of online free content and piracy.

I mean, why would anyone want to pay for pron when it is readily accessible or available?

And how has Onlyfans content somehow managed to escape being pirated (or has it being ripped and shared online too)? If it is being shared or is readily available, do most people not know they can also source this content free?

I suppose I'm just curious to understand the pron ecosystem and how onlyfans content has somehow circumvented the perceived pitfalls of piracy.

79 comments

OF sells parasocial relationships

211
- Exactly, people aren't paying for pics, they're paying to interact with the models
  
  60
  
  Which is honestly really fuckin sad when you think about it.
  
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  A few articles I’ve seen in my feed show how more successful ones hire essentially VAs to respond to messages and chat for $18+ hour. It’s really quite amazing.
  
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  And you'd need to convince the customer to share the pics to have a parasocial relationnship together.
  If you'd ask for the pics based on "fuck the talent/artist. Let's share those pics for everyone" they'd very likely respond with "fuck off".
  
  2
Some OnlyFans users think if they pay one of the content creators enough they will notice them.

130
- True dat folk.
  
  11
- Ahh, the actually-pornographic version of begging senpai to notice oneself.
  
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And how has Onlyfans content somehow managed to escape being pirated

It hasn’t. Just check torrentgalaxy.

98
- Well I need to investigate this for, uh, important research purposes...
  
  21
  
  For Science!
  
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  I just had some success on a website I found called influencers gone wild
  
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  Right you're going to masturbate. Got it, thanks for sharing
  
  -21
- You don't even need to torrent it, there's a couple of webpages that just have community uploaded only fans content. Like you can just lookup the person you're interested in and most of their content is there for free
  
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  Literally in a Telegram group that uploads the entire content of 5 not yet uploaded creators every week. At least that's what they adviertise andnhave so far delivered. "WHAT THA FUCK" "Holy shit, yo what's the matter? Whats happened? What's going on?” " THERE'S SO MUCH PORN"
  
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- coomer.su
  
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  Ah, the good old Soviet Union
  
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Not a connoisseur, so take what I say with a grain of salt but... Isn't the appeal of it, the significant personal interaction? You can't get that by ripping a couple vods. The ability to live chat (and throw paid messages their way), and have them respond, seems irreplaceable.

61
- Not much of a porn person either. But OnlyFans vs normal porn feels like shopping at your local store vs a big box chain
  
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  big box
  
  I see what you did there.
  
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  I think this is entirely the reason..
  
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- And ultimately to be replaced by chatbots without them knowing.
  
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- That's interesting. So the main attraction (so to speak) is the illusion of intimacy or personalisation. The actual pron just enables or caters to the illusion ?
  
  If Onlyfans is pirated, though, it seems to miss the main appeal of it. Nonetheless, are there dedicated trackers or search engines for the content, and does the content also give an indication of the 'personal' interactions?
  
  13
  
  Not much difference between strippers and onlyfans models, just a computer. Both are just doing what it takes to get more money out of the simp.
  
  16
  
  Listen, OnlyFans isn't porn. It's something entirely different.
  
  Let me explain. You remember when you first saw a porn vid and immediately envisioned yourself fucking the woman in place of the guy?
  
  Well now, there is no guy. It's just her. And she's only interested in you, and she's not just being naughty with you and surprising you with nudes (sometimes free ones - sometimes very naughty free ones), but she's also asking how your day was and telling you good morning and good night every day to the point that you almost believe her when she says your dick is so huge and she wants it inside her...
  
  You starting to get the picture? Porn is free because it's porn. That's not porn, that's an experience.
  
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  If you're looking for the website theres a megathread for that lol
  
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- Also sad and pathetic...
  
  -14
  
  To be frank, I think the victims of the epidemic of loneliness that plagues our society is nothing to look down upon.
  
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OnlyFan contents are pirated and shared on a daily basis as any other media. But because there are not many requests for it (also since consuming directly on OnlyFan hits differently, as you talk with the actual girl), and in part because of NSFW nature, you will find them only if you actually search for them.

Sure thing, you will never encounter this kind of content on common NSFW websites 😁

36
- why would anyone want to talk to a girl
  
  13
  
  Old men with credit cards have far more money than you sometimes get lonely. You're not the demographic they are looking for. As a matter of fact, you too are benefiting from old men with credit cards.
  
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- i'd be surprised if you're actually talking to the actual person making the content and not an assistant they pay to manage DMs & "fan" interactions.
  
  Src: a friend is an OF creator who has shared that a lot of the creators usually pay for some sort of account management service after a certain level of notoriety.
  
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  I agree 100%, most messages are just bots, and now with the surge of AI it will be much harder to distinguish a real person from a computer.
  
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There's frequent dumps of OF pages on 4chan, OF oiracy is very well alive.

32
- on 4chan?
  
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Parasocial relationships and extremely niche content. Many girls will do specific roleplays. You want a girl to fart on a cake while calling you James Baxter? Someone will. Hell, someone probably specializes in it.

30
- Squat cobbler? https://youtu.be/KaQ-s_P5mwM?si=kwdKsQanpGhHUX-5
  
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OnlyFans is hugely pirated. But they will do well for two reasons. The first is that their service is good and easy. The second is that customers know that their money is motivation. Without their subscriptions, the models won't make content.

27
Personalized and specialized content seems to factor into it.

Often it works out where someone pays a large sum for a specific piece of content. Afterward a gallery or video is posted for subscribers or individual purchase for much smaller sum, which gets pirated, but the real money is already kinda made.

This is based on a friend of mine relating how their sister makes a living off OnlyFans.

22
Most people are much more willing to pirate from a global megacorp than from an actual human person.

18
- This. OnlyFans is the "farm to table" of the porn industry and people feel differently about stealing from a small family farm than they do from Walmart.
  
  Also, beyond just the guilt aspect, that same "farm to table" principle also means that a lot of people see OnlyFans as a fair and reasonable exchange with minimal unnecessary exploitation. Paying a major porn company feels scummy and gross and may make you feel complicit with the various evils of the industry; subbing to an OnlyFans can feel more like a donation to a creator who makes content you enjoy.
  
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- I regret to make you aware of a comment above in this very thread from someone trying to do exactly that.
  
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The piracy bugbear has been raised as the reason why corporations aren't selling enough since mp3 was invented back in the day. It isn't always the case. OnlyFans is pirated but the piracy doesn't affect their bottom line enough to drive them out of business. If you think about it, lots of pornography on the internet is free, and they're still okay. It's a much more nuanced discussion than "piracy is stealing" than the corporations want you to think it is.

Edit: if I had to guess, the niche they serve or the value they add on top of "just porn" is something their customers are willing to pay for.

17
- Ah that actually makes a lot of sense.
  
  You don't pay for the porn, you pay for the interaction, seeing a different side of a public person or for the feeling of knowing a secret.
  
  Btw just to make sure, I am not being ironic here I actually never thought of it that way.
  
  5
- Way further back than MP3’s even. The music industry had a whole ad campaign about how cassette tapes were going to kill music when they came out lol. Then they freaked out again with DAT tapes and then CD-Rs. Amazing how there’s still new music today…more than ever in fact.
  
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I have no idea about how that industry works, but I guess piracy is not really driving stuff out of business elsewhere either.

Most people don't pirate. If piracy could drive companies out of business, gaming would be dead, especially indie gaming.

16
Why pay for video games when

Lots of free video games exist, and

The paid video games can be pirated

The answers are;

The free games and the paid games are not identical. There are differences between Genshin Impact and Breath of the Wild. However, both games are great, and both have their own userbase.

If the game price is reasonable, it is more convenient to buy the game than pirate it.

You can swap video games with literally any digital product, including porn.
15
- Y'know I think another possible analogy here might be the difference between a videogame and a tabletop game. Especially if we compare RPGs specifically.
  
  It's one thing to play a computer RPG. It's another thing to play with a human GM who can reshape the story as needed and who can interact with the player in an open-ended manner.
  
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There is a lot of unique creators on OF and unless you have thousands of subscribers you probably aren't going to be able to find pirated content easily. Also you can get custom content and talk directly to the creator . And from knowing people personally it's alot more work than you think to make money on OF .

15
- *talk directly to their content manager
  
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  Most smaller creators don't have a content manager .
  
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I don't have access to their data but my guesses are something like:

A) Money isn't an issue for a large number of subscribers.

B) People like those specific models after stumbling onto them on reddit or whatnot. And while there are many other attractive women, the Onlyfans model is the one they like best.

C) Similar to gonewild, there's an allure to someone ostensibly being an amateur rather than a pornstar.

D) Laziness. I imagine onlyfans really took off during the pandemic. For those who don't really look at their credit card bills, I doubt there are other reminders.

11
- Re B: personally, I do a lot of surfing on reddit and twitter for porn (and FA and e6 and...), and follow a lot of (irl, for this topic) people, curated over the last decade+; when I'm on the hunt for something/someone new, and they have an OF or other monetization system (donations/wish lists/etc notwithstanding), I lose all interest, regardless of their visual/kink appeal. I want to be seeing people that do this content because they actively enjoy it, not as a 'side hustle'. I want, I need those moans and squirms and cries of pleasure, to be genuine. And for a few of them, I want to be able to comment or say something to/about them (and possibly receive a reply), without the expectation of it turning into a financial transaction.
  
  I'm one guy in a sea of horny people, but that's my take. I want horny because horny, not because ulterior motives.
  
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You sure about that?! 😂 And that is just a simple search

Here is a different site.

5
- Could you tell me the name of the websites?
  
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  Wtf dude. Porn is problematic for all sorts of reasons as is any form of sex work in a coercive capitalist system and you want to steal from people actually making said content themselves and selling it on their own?
  
  This is one of the grossest comments I have seen all day and that includes comments on reddit about Palestine.
  
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Why pay OF if you can grab a cheap street hooker near you? Same answer/question to pirate OF.

Edit: "cheap" means one which not represent a lot of your income depending on where are you from and the ratio of the hooker.

Or better why not look for some sexy single mommys into your favorite dating app, you will have to spend some money too.

Never ever pay for OF porn or better any porn at all, it's just smoke.

Support your local businesses.

2
- OF won’t give you an STD
  
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  Being alive it's a risk bud, if you are always afraid of death how will you enjoy life?
  
  Edit: in other words, if you are afraid to die better don't born.
  
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