[HN Gopher] OnlyFans Paid Chatters Lawsuit
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OnlyFans Paid Chatters Lawsuit
Author : harambae
Score : 38 points
Date : 2024-02-03 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.savethefans.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.savethefans.com)
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > Have you ever talked to an OnlyFans model? She's NOT talking to
| you. It's a team of paid chatters she works with to defraud you.
|
| Like duh.
|
| Maybe it's just my IRC roots showing but why is this a surprise
| to anyone?
| vdaea wrote:
| I get it, but "duh" is not a legal defense. If they are saying
| they are talking to you but you are actually talking to some
| guy in India, that seems very illegal.
| sshine wrote:
| What law is that?
| mingus88 wrote:
| Just because the fraud is obvious doesn't mean it's not fraud
| bozhark wrote:
| What's the fraud? Really?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| If I'm paying to talk to Person X, but it's actually Person
| Y pretending to be X, is that not outright fraud?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| What is the difference between popular Instagram
| accounts? Surely celebrities have media managers who
| handle day to day fan communication.
| jstarfish wrote:
| People don't _pay_ to talk to media managers.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| There's a current scandal at a US university. The University
| President and his wife had an OF account, and were producing
| content as a passion project.
|
| I don't know how common that is.
|
| I expect the people trying to optimize profit are more common,
| but also switch platform and genre a lot, according to where
| the money is.
|
| But OF is certainly trying to portray itself as a passion
| project type place, however dishonest that may be.
| lupire wrote:
| They are seeking class representatives for a class action
| lawsuit.
|
| Or it's a honeypot scam. Class action lawsuits are always on
| random websites with no security.
| richardfey wrote:
| The part about blackmailing sounds like hand-waving to me, I
| also suspect that the whole thing is not genuine.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Isn't the implication here that they would be suing OnlyFans,
| rather than the models? Unless OnlyFans is in on it, don't see
| how that's doable.
| retrac wrote:
| Some more info about the lawsuit:
| https://avn.com/business/articles/legal/attorney-wants-to-su...
| (NSFW warning -- AVN is "Adult Video News")
|
| It's an interesting legal thought experiment. Possible analogy:
| if I claim that Celebrity Y is going to be at an event, and that
| people who buy a backstage pass will get to briefly meet
| Celebrity Y, but Celebrity Y is actually a Celebrity Y
| impersonator, is that dishonest dealing? False advertising?
| trhway wrote:
| They do that with Putin. Works ok, even for the meetings with
| the heads of other states (except for China or Turkey - these
| guys get the real deal refusing to settle for the impersonator)
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| [citation needed]
| jowea wrote:
| I understand the logic of that claim for when he's supposedly
| visiting occupied areas, but why do this when meeting another
| head of state?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| An example of that analogy:
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/24/doop-snog...
| nemothekid wrote:
| I think your example is quite clearly fraud; and I think you
| would get a refund for that. I think the OnlyFans situation is
| different. I might be wrong - but I don't think you actually
| pay to message OF creators. I think messaging is free, and you
| can be upsold through messaging. In that case I think it's like
| I wrote a letter to the President or Justin Bieber and his
| assistant wrote me a reply that was signed by him. I think this
| is common enough already and the assistant has authorization to
| write on his behalf. If I later buy Justin Bieber's new single
| and then later found out Justin Bieber didn't personally read
| my letter, is that fraud?
|
| Furthermore I don't think you can buy time on these platform,
| only videos. I may be able to see the case where a model said
| give me $500 and you can call me on the phone, and then the
| person who picked up worked in a call center - you were
| directly scammed. But if someone you were messaging, then
| upsold you a video of the original creator on a dildo - I don't
| see how you can make the case that what you bought was
| misrepresented.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Fake celebrity artifacts (like signatures, items, etc.) is a
| known form of fraud, and AFAIK there were prosecutions on it.
| I.e. if I sell you a book that is claimed to be signed by
| celebrity, but in fact it's my own signature, I would
| definitely be committing fraud. I think impersonations may be
| argued the same, though proving material harm (beyond the cost
| of the ticket) would be very hard, and unless the ticket is
| _really_ expensive or you make it a class action, prosecuting
| this will be financially infeasible. But if it 's done on scale
| - then yes, as it looks there were successful class actions on
| lesser grounds than this (not a lawyer and all that stuff, of
| course, just thinking logically).
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| There a new online service that lets you get autographed
| content from celebrities. It shows the celebrities signing the
| item, and that video is an important part of the service.
|
| Celebrity economics are weird. But authenticity is an important
| part.
| throwawayfans wrote:
| Throw away account for obvious reasons.
|
| My wife and I run an onlyfans account, a manyvids account and a
| few other related accounts. I can tell you from extensive
| networking with other onlyfans creators the number of them using
| chatters is pretty small, probably less than 1%. I personally
| have never interacted with someone that uses them. I also run a
| discord and telegram support server for creators so I interact
| with a lot, but certainly have not made any kind of scientific
| measure.
|
| Some higher tier models use agencies to run their stuff and
| that's usually where the chatters come into play.
|
| The general consensus is to avoid agencies or managers for
| obvious reasons.
|
| While I personally think it's kind of shady, I very much doubt
| it's illegal, but ianal. There is one fans platform that I know
| of that has integrated AI chat bots so _shrug_
| breakfastduck wrote:
| > probably less than 1%
|
| Probably a significant overlap with the 1% of the highest
| earning creators though, I'd bet.
| starkparker wrote:
| > Some higher tier models use agencies to run their stuff and
| that's usually where the chatters come into play.
|
| If this suit is real then I think that's who it's targeting
| anyway, since that's where the money is.
|
| The whole thing seems spurred on by the WaPo article from
| November about Bryce and Brian Adams, which opens with their
| $120,000 driveway and piles on the mentions of how much money
| they make from there.
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/o...
|
| > but ianal
|
| Cheeky.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| My anecdotal evidence is the opposite. One couple I know, the
| male does a lot of the botting for his partner. One of my aging
| model friends switched from having an OF to running other
| girls. 3rd model friend use to employ their friend to run
| around 60% of their operation but the quality suffered a bit
| and the lost a whale. I recently did a little demo for a friend
| on how ChatGPT could be used to create Twitter copy for various
| market types to push OF.
| almatabata wrote:
| > While I personally think it's kind of shady, I very much
| doubt it's illegal, but ianal.
|
| If they disclose that the fan interacts with a bot or a random
| employee its probably legal. Its the fact that they are not
| disclosing it that smells illegal to me. I do not know if its
| closer to false advertising or to fraud.
| redsoundbanner wrote:
| > _I can tell you from extensive networking with other onlyfans
| creators the number of them using chatters is pretty small,
| probably less than 1%_
|
| 1. Why would anybody believe you?
|
| 2. Why would you believe other "creators"?
|
| 3. What is the percentage of customers and/or revenue generated
| by the 1% of "creators" using Chatters?
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| For #1 and #2, what reason is there to doubt them? I have a
| couple of friends doing OF/SW and this isn't incongruent with
| their experience or what gets discussed in the community. I
| generally trust what people say in communities of people in
| the same domain sphere (i.e. discussion on HN about which
| software platforms are easier or harder to implement).
|
| Most people don't subcontract their job either, even if it
| could increase their overall income.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Plenty of average models use OF agencies. They're quite
| prevalent! Maybe your circle is more random people hacking it
| on their own and doing it as a side gig but they move little
| money and little followers.
|
| It's a simple model for agencies:
|
| 1. Get broke girls to produce photos and videos
|
| 2. Post some content to free account
|
| 3. Post some more content to paid account
|
| 4. Post some teasers on reddit nsfw subreddits
|
| 5. Get 3rd worlders as chatters to upsell some of the content
|
| 6. Ask girls for the occasional custom request
| redder23 wrote:
| I do NOT take your word for it, in fact, I am calling total BS
| on your 1% number. You and the people you interacted with may
| not do it, or tell you they don't, that does not prove any 1%
| number whatsoever. It's a common practice, especially for the
| immoral people who do OF to extract as much money from people
| they detest as many vapid OF models do. And the higher their
| earnings and chats go, the more they get overwhelmed by the
| volumes of incoming messages, so if they have not done it
| already they are more likely to get into paying chatters when
| the demand raises.
|
| I would never ever pay even 1 cent for any porn and I think
| people who are doing this are sad and lonely and pathetic and
| think they get anything from "chatting" with some OF girl. I
| would feel so pathetic doing that, in fact to me, it would not
| even matter that much if it's some guy in Bangladesh or the
| real girl, it amounts to the same waste of money.
|
| I support this effort anyway because it is legal fraud what
| they are doing.
|
| OF owner is a jew who donates to Israels effort to massacre
| even more Palestinians, btw. What a shocker. It's like immoral
| on multiple levels. Porn is not very healthy on its own but
| what OF does is it fakes a social and emotional connection that
| does not exist, that makes it 100x worse than just jerking off
| to free porn, closing it and moving on with your day. OF is
| immoral without chatters, they just make it worse.
|
| Even if the percentage of people who do it be low, the really
| hot, successful and popular girls are the ones that are taking
| in the millions while the average girl on OF makes below $100 a
| month I believe. So you need to look at the CONSUMER numbers,
| not the creator numbers. The consumers are the ones being
| defrauded by these high level girls that have millions of subs!
| Uinchuling wrote:
| >OF owner is a jew
|
| This goes without saying in that industry
| spillguard wrote:
| This kind of low-quality flamebait truly has no place on
| Hackernews
| pierat wrote:
| > We're investigating the OnlyFans industry and have found
| widespread questionable practices that could put you at risk of
| extortion, blackmail, or humiliation.
|
| > We are working to get justice for all subscribers who have been
| lied to and defrauded. Fill out the form below to learn more. All
| information is kept strictly confidential.
|
| GIVE US YOUR INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR ACTIVITIES ON A PORN SITE AND
| WE PROMISES WE'LL DO ONLY GOOD THINGS WITH IT.
|
| I mean, what kind of stupid do you all think we are?
| bloopernova wrote:
| I'm sure they've already gotten a _lot_ of responses. People
| will be suckered by that little dangle of "potential reward of
| up to 20k dollars!"
| smsm42 wrote:
| They target the same people who paid good money to chat with
| some poor guy in Bangladesh believing it's a gorgeous woman, so
| you tell me how gullible they expect their target audience to
| be.
| redder23 wrote:
| These are lawyers who found a cause, they get their cut if they
| win the case, they see that there is a change of getting
| settlements from high tier girls and agencies for this. It's
| pretty obvious what going on.
|
| Why would I expect anything shady, and what would they have to
| gain or sell from people porn activities? Every other website
| with a bit of tracking cookies/fingerprinting knows more about
| your porn use that you could every tell a bunch of lawyers on
| your own. You make zero sense and think you are smart. That is
| hilarious.
| cheriot wrote:
| "I'm paying to be deceived, but not like that!"
|
| - Robert B. Carey probably
|
| This is like getting mad that the Ariel you met in Orlando wasn't
| the same mermaid as the movie. It's an entertainment business;
| you're talking to a performer.
| beau_g wrote:
| Is there a precedent that suggests there must be a reasonable
| expectation that if you are contacting someone over the internet
| or phone and giving them money, that person has some duty to
| ensure their internet/TV/professional/social media etc. persona
| is the person on the other end of the line? I'm sure many have
| experienced calling phone support for a product you subscribe
| for, the associate is "Brian from Wisconsin" but clearly someone
| in another country. Bit different case as you were not calling
| "Brian" specifically, but still someone that you are ostensibly
| paying pretending to be someone else. There were also countless
| fortune telling/psychic phone lines were clearly Miss Cleo et al.
| were not fielding the calls, these businesses ran into other
| legal troubles but was having people essentially play their
| character on the other end of the line one of them? I assume on
| Onlyfans creators can assumed to be "characters" to some degree,
| don't most go by pseudonyms to begin with?
| ilaksh wrote:
| It's interesting to think about how this situation will evolve as
| "AI girlfriend" software (and underlying ML models) improves.
| Perhaps along with next generation consumer hardware.
|
| If there is a good chance that any popular "online personality"
| of that sort will be an AI, then I might as well skip a step and
| just install my "girlfriend" locally.
|
| Also, systems like Stable Diffusion or other similar models like
| instant-id can generate imagery of any "personality" for any
| desired situation at will. I think personalities will have
| trouble suing everyone who is doing that on their own computer.
| Or ever knowing how many are doing it.
|
| I think there are actually already somewhat convincing versions
| of this. At least on a surface level. (Sometimes I suspect that
| r/localllama could be called r/localwaifu and it would be mostly
| accurate). Just haven't investigated thoroughly. Could be an
| interesting weekend project.
|
| I was doing an interview for a project where someone wanted to
| build a more "empathetic" AI. Not necessarily a girlfriend, maybe
| more useful (but perhaps not necessarily not a girlfriend). He
| had someone from BlackRock on the call with him. Which I think
| was just his buddy from college and that was a coincidence.
| Probably. But it's hard not to think that sort of thing as being
| a profitable investment.
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