[HN Gopher] Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'
___________________________________________________________________
Life as an OnlyFans 'chatter'
Author : 1659447091
Score : 122 points
Date : 2026-03-11 08:08 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| anovikov wrote:
| Now this is almost entirely automated anyway, there is a big
| adult ecosystem here in Cyprus and i talk to a lot of people. No
| manual work is used there anymore, "chatters" are a thing of the
| past.
|
| Now they are well on the path to automate OnlyFans models
| themselves, there are plenty of hybrid sites where known live
| models are attracted with good terms to bring in the users, and
| then slowly switched for AI ones, and it WORKS.
|
| Adult industry is so competitive and fast-evolving because there
| are few deep moats, it shows the way for everyone else, in fact.
| vimda wrote:
| God that's depressing. Even when you _pay_ for human connection
| you're being fobbed off onto an AI
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Bet you had some really deep human connection with that guy
| chatting to you from the Philippines.
| vimda wrote:
| You betray your ignorance of how parasocial OnlyFans and
| their ilk get. Yes, people get real connection out of it,
| whether its with who they think they're talking to or not.
| I think that connecting those people into a chat bot
| instead of a real human is depressing, and a bad thing for
| society, but you're welcome to disagree with that
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Talking to a real human seems more depressing to me,
| especially when they're making less than $2/hour doing
| it, have multiple chats going all trying to hit sales
| targets, and they feel bad for _you_ in the interaction.
| Paying for female attention is pretty bad, but not even
| getting the attention you paid for is just bleak. At that
| point go with the machine. At least it 's not thinking
| "what the hell am I doing here?" while it's generating
| messages.
| luckylion wrote:
| What's the difference? The users think they talk to some
| specific person and form a connection with them, and they
| don't.
|
| Whether they get strung along by a human, a chatbot, or a
| simple cronjob - does it matter?
| nkrisc wrote:
| It's not a real connection. It's completely invented in
| their mind. Probably more accurate to call it a delusion.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| I'll admit. I' too old to 'get' OF.
| superb_dev wrote:
| I don't think it's an age thing, I think is desperation.
| I'm not desperate enough to get it
| sillyfluke wrote:
| I'm also often not desperate for a pun from a stranger,
| but I think a 'get' it.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| Now that you got the balls rolling in an unwanted
| direction, I'm sure you're not the only one here with
| blue jewels.
| sofixa wrote:
| What's there to get? People, overwhemingly men, pay for
| adult content from performers, majority women.
|
| It _often_ involves a supposedly personal touch (like
| chatting with (someone pretending to be) them, or being
| able to pay for custom content).
|
| Nothing really exceptional in any way other than scale,
| democratisation (anyone of age can sign up to post
| content) and the digital transformation. Back in the day
| people used to buy porn magazines with their niche
| preferences, and write in letters to share their stories
| / fantasies and get responses back.
| cess11 wrote:
| What do you mean by "human connection"?
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| It appears a lot of people using OF are using it as a
| parasocial medium, not strictly for porn. They want to
| believe they're actually in touch with the performer and
| part of their lives to some degree.
| cess11 wrote:
| What does "para-" mean?
|
| Edit: Right, 'beside', 'outside', like in paranormal.
| Now, are parasocial relationships "human connection"?
| jihadjihad wrote:
| _para-_ has a variety of meanings [0] depending on which
| word it's used to form.
|
| _Parasocial_ itself means "one-sided" in a relationship
| [1].
|
| 0: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/para-#English
|
| 1: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/parasocial
| jfengel wrote:
| It means that it shares some, but not all, aspects of a
| social relationship.
|
| It's often applied to one-sided relationships with
| celebrities, where you feel a personal connection to them
| but they literally don't know you exist.
| alwa wrote:
| "Para-" tends to mean "around" or "beside," kind of in
| the sense of "close to" or "almost"-- _paraprofessional_
| teachers or lawyers, _paramilitary_ groups, _parallel_
| lines, _parasitic_ symbiotes. In this specific context,
| American sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl
| (1956) [0] coined the notion of "para-social " relations,
| in order to describe audience members' intensifying, one-
| sided sensations-of-relationships with media characters
| as American-style mass media came into its own:
|
| > _The most remote and illustrious men are met as if they
| were in the circle of one 's peers; the same is true of a
| character in a story who comes to life in these media in
| an especially vivid and arresting way. We propose to call
| this seeming face-to-face relationship between spectator
| and performer a para-social relationship._
|
| They contrast para-social relations with face-to-face
| ones, which they call _ortho-social_ :
|
| > _The crucial difference in experience obviously lies in
| the lack of effective reciprocity [...] To be sure, the
| audience is free to choose among the relationships
| offered, but it cannot create new ones. Whoever finds the
| experience unsatisfying has only the option to withdraw._
|
| > _...the media present opportunities for the playing of
| roles to which the spectator has-or feels he has-a
| legitimate claim, but for which he finds no opportunity
| in his social environment. This function of the para-
| social then can properly be called compensatory, inasmuch
| as it provides the socially and psychologically isolated
| with a chance to enjoy the elixir of sociability._
|
| It's a brisk accessible read, and spookily still
| relevant. Thanks for the impetus to dust it off :)
|
| Anyway--in the 2010s, social scientists began to use the
| idea to think about the emerging class of even-more-
| intimate, confessional celebrities--like the Kardashians
| --as those celebrities started to use the socials 'round
| the clock and to broadcast seemingly intimate, unguarded
| moments [1]. "Healthy" doesn't seem to be the word the
| researchers and clinicians tend to choose...
|
| [0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00332747.
| 1956.11...
|
| [1] e.g.
| https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research_all/7/
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| > Now, are parasocial relationships "human connection"?
|
| No, they are a proxy people attempt to use as a
| substitute for more genuine, two-sided relationships.
| It's quite common. I think lonely people are most
| susceptible to it, though.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Yes, and it's sad.
|
| I wish someone would create a business that profits from
| people forming actual connections with each other, but
| every opportunity has been displaced.
|
| Dating sites replaces meeting IRL, and foster superficial
| relationships anyway. Bars are passe. Social clubs, golf
| clubs, etc, seem to belong to a past generation. Social
| media killed the social part. The damage to society is
| real.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| There is one: universities. They're just really expensive
| so you can't stay there for more than a few years, and
| people aren't properly advised of how important the
| opportunity is.
| prepend wrote:
| Meetup is kind of like that. I use it for ongoing hiking
| clubs and book clubs and movie clubs.
|
| Comically, Facebook sort of serves this way as well by
| brining together hiking clubs and d&d groups.
| asdff wrote:
| Every time someone says something like this, I can think
| of examples of every point just from the limited scope of
| my own life to the contrary, which from the frequency it
| happens I'm guessing indicates my experience isn't so
| unique and the world isn't this doom and gloom black and
| white world as described on the internet. People still
| meet serendipitously. People still go out. The golf club
| at my municipal course still throws out several
| tournaments a year with enough demand for like four each
| mens and womens handicap flights. Maybe the people
| alleging these things have to look inwardly and ask why
| they aren't themselves doing these things that can still
| be done today.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Golf clubs are super niche and self-selecting.
|
| There are almost no spaces left which are easily
| discoverable by "analog" means without relying at all on
| social media.
|
| The UK used to have a very strong pub and club culture.
| That's been collapsing for most of this century - some of
| it helped by government legislation.
|
| This hasn't changed direction recently.
|
| https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/graph-of-the-day-
| how-...
| sneak wrote:
| They did, but it turns out that people's most common
| social activity/interest is sex-based.
|
| Omegle wasn't known for making BFFs.
| eucyclos wrote:
| Meetup's still fighting the good fight :)
| nine_k wrote:
| To pay for a human connection, take someone out for a dinner,
| and foot the bill.
|
| At OnlyFans you're paying for a video feed, and computers are
| pretty good at producing convincing video feeds now.
| localuser13 wrote:
| >To pay for a human connection, take someone out for a
| dinner, and foot the bill.
|
| I'm married now, and never used any parasocial platform
| OnlyFans or another, but trivializing the problem of young
| adult loneliness is either ignorant or condescending.
|
| A large fraction of young males don't have anyone to "take
| out for a dinner", or at least have no idea how to initiate
| that. You may scoff at that, but I certainly wouldn't know
| how to do it, and money was not a problem. Paying for human
| connection, _especially_ online, was tempting.
| prepend wrote:
| The solution to loneliness isn't fake connections. And I
| think makes it even worse because fake friends don't act
| like real people and make it harder to form real
| relationships with people who have their own desires and
| needs and aren't just sycophants receiving pay.
| asdff wrote:
| Taking someone out for a dinner and footing the bill does
| not require you to be some cassanova. Escort services are
| a thing and honestly somewhat increasingly normalized.
| The latest chris hemsworth movie had him using an escort
| and didn't paint him as weird for it or anything, kind of
| just seemed like a gym membership or any other service
| the way it was casually broached (he played a certain
| healthy/rich/clean cut professional thief/perhaps even
| autistic character).
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| LA is weird and not everyone wants to live there.
|
| Escort services are still a very niche interest in most
| of the world.
|
| And they provide a simulacrum of human connection.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| Escorting is more similar to OF than to "real" dating. In
| both cases the "service provider" pretends to be a
| perfect match for the customer, actively molding their
| persona to fit them. The more someone interacts with such
| tailored experiences the harder it is to adjust to the
| "real" experience.
|
| Which is probably fine if you're a successful man in his
| 40s who has more time than money and treats escorting as
| a shortcut. Not so fine if you're a man half his age who
| is struggling to find a partner.
| eucyclos wrote:
| I bet a lot of people would get into escorting if they
| expected their customers to look like Chris Hemsworth.
| Who's Hollywood got playing the next normalized John,
| Emma Watson?
| like_any_other wrote:
| > At OnlyFans you're paying for a video feed
|
| Then they can prominently state the chat is not with the
| actual creator, or they can go to jail for fraud. This "oh
| they _say_ they 're providing you X but you're _actually_
| paying for Y " argument is getting even more tiresome than
| the "fraud is so widespread why worry about it" one.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| It's going to kill the software industry as we know it!
|
| We're literally killing our field by making the devices and
| internet so repulsive that people are actively unplugging.
| You can't hear about this online because the bot generated
| content is filling the gap and the people doing it aren't
| online to tell you about it.
|
| Children are getting addicted to everything because the
| internet has killed any sense of self-stimulation and they
| are growing up into gamblers with cards, sports, and
| prediction markets or rage-addicted media consumers.
|
| There is plenty of human connection to be had out there, it
| is free, and all you have to do is put down the phone or
| computer. It is getting extremely compelling as an
| alternative for increasing large groups of people.
|
| The tech industry is energetically strangling its golden
| goose.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| There will be some interesting game theory studies in the
| aftermath.
| localuser13 wrote:
| I think that's just a good old prisoner dilemma. You
| can't have a free-range golden goose, because if you grow
| it responsibly, others will abuse it first and you will
| get out of business. The only way is to be as greedy as
| legally allowed, because otherwise you're left behind.
| roysting wrote:
| Ironically, I was trying to explain to someone I know that
| was somewhat considering getting into that milieu that what
| such people are really doing is selling affection to an
| affection deprived audience. Every person that sells
| themselves has the same orifices and they more or less all
| look the same, and everyone has seen thousands of them by
| now. The differentiation is the connection and being able to
| identify the particular sad void needing to be fill.
|
| AI will make this really bad, because it will surely quickly
| learn how to tap into your deepest impulses and desires for
| connection and affection. It sounds weird, but in a way,
| there is some strong correlation between other forms of
| fraud, the most obvious being romance cons/frauds; where
| women are not looking for big rods, but for romance lady
| boners... yet another form of seeing affection.
|
| Some of us harm ourselves for a lack of an affection, others
| fall prey to it making them vulnerable. I do hope that AI
| could and will also be used to help people get a semblance of
| healthy affection, if not maybe even facilitate making real
| connections that can provide real human affection.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Does that mean that people do not recognize that some of the
| content is AI? Or do they simply accept it?
| firtoz wrote:
| There's enough people on both camps I'm sure.
| myhf wrote:
| A little bit of real content goes a long way toward getting
| people to pay for something unknown, which then turns out to
| be AI-generated. Even if they are not satisfied, that counts
| as AI content making a sale.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_in_a_poke
| createaccount99 wrote:
| That's pretty smart.
| vova_hn2 wrote:
| Saw a funny video [0] in the music-adjacent part of YouTube
| about an Instagram trend when man record themselves playing a
| musical instrument (usually guitar), then use AI video editing
| to turn themselves into scantily clad women and use these
| videos to lure people into viewing their adult content (also AI
| generated).
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqrJgjrBV2I (it's a very
| short video, only 45 seconds)
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Even bigger stars seem to be doing it. This is Carmen Electra's
| _verified_ Facebook page:
| https://www.facebook.com/CarmenElectra
|
| Scroll down a bit and you'll see all of the images have the
| exact same face plastered on a clearly AI body and the account
| is posting new photos multiple times per day.
|
| And every single post has thousands of likes and hundreds of
| messages from actual humans. People either don't notice the
| obvious fakes or don't care.
|
| Instagram is similar, you don't need to go far to find
| extremely obvious AI generated "people" with big accounts and
| links to OF accounts. There's no way to report these either,
| because Meta doesn't care.
| hasbot wrote:
| Heh, she's 53 years old! Obviously her followers don't care
| they're looking at fake photos.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Isn't it technically against Meta TOS anyway to promote sex
| work?
| PeterStuer wrote:
| 2$ an hour chatter and 20$ an hour 'model', both replaced by AI.
| cedarscarlett wrote:
| Let me complain about how I'm being exploited at my job while
| voluntarily choosing said job over literally every other job
| available to me.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Please do enumerate these other jobs that are available to the
| Filipino currently performing this job for... _checks notes_...
| $2 /hour?
| mhb wrote:
| Please say what you think the hourly average wage is in the
| Philippines and how you conclude that this isn't the woman's
| best option despite her revealed preference that it is.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I don't think you and I are disagreeing here? The article
| explicitly states that she only took this work because she
| couldn't find other work, and that she dislikes the work
| intensely (... but has no better job prospects)
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| So what is your point exactly? That we as a society
| should see to it that no matter how much sex work pays,
| we provide an equally high-paying and easy job for
| people? What do you propose?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I'd endorse that principle. It's true, of course, that
| societies without an abundance of easy and high-paying
| jobs may struggle to satisfy it except by banning sex
| work.
| swarnie wrote:
| > As of early 2026, the minimum wage in the Philippines is
| set daily rather than hourly and varies by region, with a
| common daily minimum of approximately 695 PHP in some
| sectors, often equating to less than $2 USD per hour
|
| Pretty much any Wagie job?
| mmooss wrote:
| That's how exploitation works: The exploited don't have another
| choice. That doesn't make doing cruel things to them wrong and
| (hopefully) illegal.
|
| For example, someone could compel people who are starving to do
| all sorts of horrible things for food, and then say 'well, they
| chose to do it!'.
| mhb wrote:
| Once you make this job illegal, what do you think she does
| then for a job? By taking this job she has revealed that this
| is her best option. When you make the job illegal, you're
| forcing her to take a worse alternative.
| mmooss wrote:
| That's the argument of employers, who introduce that false
| choice. The option they don't mention is to pay them more.
| dangus wrote:
| This is true, but I also think that the information in the
| article alone is insufficient to make a judgment.
|
| This salary is over the Philippines minimum wage. It's a
| legal job like any other.
|
| The people interviewed are not super happy about the content
| of the job, but none of it seems to be anything more than it
| being pornography-related.
|
| Nobody's really seeming to cross any lines of illegality as
| described in the article. This doesn't come close to the kind
| of conditions faced by Meta's contractors in Africa spying
| through Meta glasses in private homes.
|
| I would equate this type of job to any type of job that has
| aspects that some people would never be willing to do.
|
| E.g., I would never be willing to be a window washer. I'm too
| scared of heights. Same deal with tower construction. But
| there are plenty of people doing those jobs who don't feel
| exploited.
|
| The plus side of jobs like this are that you can do this work
| at home, you can be physically disabled, there's often some
| level of flexibility of hours, and there's no manual labor.
|
| I'm going to guess that the only scandal here is that the
| Philippines is 80% Catholic and possibly more conservative
| than people in the countries where OnlyFans generates its
| income.
| layer8 wrote:
| What crosses the line is that, as stated in the article,
| the job is a dishonest scam towards the clients.
| mhb wrote:
| OK. But that isn't the main point of _this_ article. It
| 's only an incidental fact in the description of "how
| "heartbreaking" it is to get less than $2 per hour...".
| It doesn't sound as if the woman would be heartbroken at
| all if she was getting paid $20 per hour.
| autoexec wrote:
| How is this not fraud, or at least false advertising? If I'm
| paying money to chat with a specific sex worker how is it even
| legal to let some random dude in a third world country pretend to
| be the person I'm supposed to be talking to? I've never
| personally engaged in these types of systems, but I don't think
| there's a problem with them as long as they are run honestly. It
| sounds like Onlyfans is exploiting workers and their own
| customers.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| But then.. how is it any different from Amazon saying automated
| stores while a human is watching cameras or waymo having humans
| operate in some circumstances. If there are no rules, you can't
| expect corporates to govern themselves in a way that does not
| benefit them..
| autoexec wrote:
| People don't usually pay for automated stores or rides
| because of the automated aspect. They just want to get the
| items or get to their destination. I think waymo was mostly
| upfront that humans are working behind the scenes, but if
| amazon lied to investors and shareholders by claiming that
| their stores were automated when it was "Actually Indians" I
| think they could/should have been sued.
| gruez wrote:
| >But then.. how is it any different from Amazon saying
| automated stores while a human is watching cameras or waymo
| having humans operate in some circumstances.
|
| Did amazon/waymo actually claim they were 100% automated?
| Moreover is the fact that they're 100% automated a material
| fact to the consumer? The investors might have grounds to sue
| for securities fraud, but it's going to be much tougher for a
| consumer, when for all intents and purposes they got what
| they expected (ie. whatever they bought from the shop).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_fact
| abeppu wrote:
| > Moreover is the fact that they're 100% automated a
| material fact to the consumer?
|
| I do think that for a meaningful fraction of first time
| customers, the choice to try it is about the novelty of it
| being automated. In SF I do often see people explaining
| waymo to out of town visitors, and the uniqueness of
| "driverless" vs "remote controlled" is part of the appeal.
| whynotmaybe wrote:
| Do we know if onlyfan is already training their own models with
| their user's content?
| giantrobot wrote:
| How could they not be? At $2 an hour they'd be leaving money
| on the table by not paying a tiny fraction of that for an
| LLM.
| thfuran wrote:
| I don't think it's the platform paying the workers. I think
| they're third parties hired by the posters. Of course,
| OnlyFans itself could theoretically create and offer a
| service to replace them, but Fraud As A Service doesn't
| actually seem all that reliable as a business model.
| V__ wrote:
| There is probably some lingo somewhere clarifying that you pay
| for the "experience" of her and not for her in particular.
| bawolff wrote:
| I wonder to what extent the clients care. Either way its still
| paying for a fantasy.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| if a person pays for a Nike product and receives a
| counterfeit, are we saying no harm no foul if they don't
| realise?
| bawolff wrote:
| No, i'm not.
| mingus88 wrote:
| It is fraud. However, one thing has become crystal clear lately
| is that laws are only as good as we have systems in place that
| are willing and able to enforce them.
|
| And further, scamming people in the context of sex has always
| been easy because of the shame in admitting you fell for it.
|
| Imagine filing a report that you spent thousands of dollars
| chatting with some random person, having the chat logs
| submitted as evidence, etc. it's similar to why all types of
| sexual assault are rarely reported
| ghurtado wrote:
| > because of the shame in admitting you fell for it.
|
| I would argue that the reason has more to do with our utter
| inability to create common sense laws regarding anything
| "sex".
| jzb wrote:
| Which goes back to the shame thing, really. Few people are
| willing to stand up and advocate for common sense laws
| because they don't want to be associated with anything
| regarding sex. Politicians, whom are not generally noted
| for being averse to hiring sex workers, sure as hell don't
| want to be advocating for them for fear of losing
| elections.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Politicians [...] don't want to be advocating for them
| for fear of losing elections.
|
| This assumes that the politician plans and has a chance
| to become re-elected. If this is not the case, the
| arguments for not advocating for such laws become much
| less important for the respective politician.
| monocasa wrote:
| A politician can rarely enact laws alone, and the above
| issues typically apply to enough politicians at a time to
| make having a quorum difficult.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Is there anywhere with one term limits for law makers
| with no staggered terms? If every member of a parliament
| is yoloing it, I'm not aure if things would be better or
| worse.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Don't you think it also comes down to "exploitation" and
| not shame alone?
| ahnick wrote:
| > laws are only as good as we have systems in place that are
| willing and ABLE to enforce them.
|
| The 'able' part is the critical insight. Laws are too often
| passed that really have no ability to be enforced, but end up
| adding bureaucratic processes that law abiding companies have
| to follow. This also implies that governments need to
| actively clean up existing laws, which almost never happens
| unless there is enough support to pass a new law to actively
| supplant the old one.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| There is also that international problem. If an South
| American is frauded on an US American platform, by an east
| European using an African fake chatter: Which legislation,
| which court is applicable? Which oversight authority should
| handle this?
| shrubble wrote:
| This was done by "mail order bride" companies like those in
| Russia and Ukraine, that charge per message or letter sent back
| and forth, using their platform that does not allow for contact
| information to be shared; you are not talking to Anastasia but
| "Hairy Boris"!
|
| Later scams evolved to use prerecorded video clips etc. Which I
| assume is next for OF also.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's no more fraud than any other "fan club" where you got
| letters and personal autographs and such from the celebrity but
| didn't realize it was all done by a hired staff of employees.
| It's been a thing for decades.
| zarzavat wrote:
| You mean it's equally fraud as that. Fraud has a particular
| definition which does not permit "someone else is committing
| fraud and getting away with it" as a defense.
| LogicFailsMe wrote:
| Not to mention politicians begging for money and in return
| you get begged for more money by more politicians.
| neya wrote:
| It is fraud. But these parties are protected by OnlyFans
| themselves. Similar to how dating apps promote (and actually
| lot of them enforce) fake accounts with fake pictures because
| it boosts everything - engagement and revenue. So they always
| turn a blind eye.
|
| Last week, I used a dating app where they used a fake profile
| tailored specifically for me, using a married woman's photo. I
| deleted the app. Every app in this space is scummy and the
| people at the top running these are just trash. That's the real
| reason.
| fHr wrote:
| It is blatant fraud and onlyfans should be suable for this.
| Fuck that whole company and all their bs pr management workers
| doing nothing getting rich on regarded male beta simp money.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| First you could sue all the singers who have lip synced in a
| live performance and see how it goes.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I'm reminded of the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli_Vanilli fiasco: nobody
| sued, but revealing they were lip syncing killed their
| career.
| sofixa wrote:
| But in this case its not OnlyFans doing the (potential?)
| fraud, it's the individual performers and potentially their
| agencies. OnlyFans just provide the platform and turn a blind
| eye.
| enriquto wrote:
| > It sounds like Onlyfans is exploiting workers and their own
| customers.
|
| But this is the basic principle of capitalism. The company
| exploits workers (in order to obtain a net benefit from their
| work), and exploits customers (by selling the lowest-quality,
| most expensive product it can manage to). Companies that don't
| behave like that get out-competed by companies that do. This
| dynamic is _the_ root of our economic system, as was very
| clearly explained by Adam Smith and Karl Marx two centuries ago
| (in slightly different tones of voice).
|
| The particular case you mention is nothing special. The exact
| same thing happens for all the products that people buy. This
| is just the stable state of our (some would say "rotten", some
| would say "healthy") society.
| sneak wrote:
| It's not exploitation unless the participants in the deal are
| being coerced. You can't make a solid case for employees
| being coerced to work for an exploitative employer outside of
| company towns or non-functioning labor markets; neither of
| these apply to the Philippines.
|
| If the chatter thought the job was so bad, they can quit and
| get a different one. Millions of people make that choice, it
| is available to them. There is no requirement that they do
| this work; it is entirely voluntary. The people doing these
| jobs have determined that it is the best option for them,
| personally, or they wouldn't be there.
|
| PS: $2-4/hr is a more than decent wage in the Philippines.
| Median income there is $2.11/hr, minimum wage is $1.36/hr.
| enriquto wrote:
| > unless the participants in the deal are being coerced.
|
| Here's the nice thing about it: they are! If they don't
| work (for any of the equally exploitative companies in
| their country) they die.
| nradov wrote:
| And yet lots of people don't work for companies and still
| manage not to die. I wonder how they do it? A mystery, I
| guess.
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| Yes, everyone should become a one-person company!
| fn-mote wrote:
| They are being coerced to participate in the capitalist
| system, maybe. Not to be a "chatter".
|
| No argument against protections, though.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The requirement is that they not starve, not be made
| homeless, and not be forced into even less appealing and/or
| more dangerous work.
|
| The coercion comes from the very limited choices they have
| to avoid that.
| nradov wrote:
| Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it is
| the reverse.
| 9rx wrote:
| So what you are saying is that, under communism, women
| exploit women and men bear the children?
|
| I know Projet de communaute philosophe is utopian, but I
| don't think that is the story it tells. Maybe something got
| lost in translation?
| pjc50 wrote:
| The sex workers aren't legally speaking staff. It's a
| platform that takes a cut like all the app stores.
| superb_dev wrote:
| I can't believe that someone paying for this actually expects
| to chat with the model. Just think of the logistics, it would
| be impossible
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > I can't believe that someone paying for this actually
| expects to chat with the model. Just think of the logistics,
| it would be impossible
|
| It's not impossible, you can do it with a little bit of fine
| tuning starting from her history of chats on the platform,
| and having her set a custom user-level prompt where she lists
| her interests, hobbies and things she likes. Then give her
| auto-compacted daily or weekly summaries of the most
| compelling chats. It's a model either way, right?
| orthoxerox wrote:
| On the one hand, yes, on the other hand, personal touch doesn't
| scale. Webcam models maintain a personal touch by broadcasting
| their interactions with those who tip, but OF models can't do
| that. They have two options when their customer base grows too
| large:
|
| Option one is to use these chatters.
|
| Option two is to chat only with those who pay extra or with no
| one at all.
| sequoia wrote:
| Someone paid to have a fantasy of sex, and they got that
| fantasy. If they don't like it, they don't do it again, and
| this is true whether it's "the model" or someone else. If they
| do like it, what's the issue?
|
| This is like saying you paid for a celebrity plumber & a
| regular plumber did the work, but you're upset because you
| wanted the celebrity. "The job" got done one way or another.
| They're selling digital handjobs here, there's no need to be
| precious about it.
| lich_king wrote:
| > If they do like it, what's the issue?
|
| Are you serious? However goofy that sounds, they paid for a
| _specific_ fantasy. They would not have paid if you
| advertised the service as "talk dirty with a random dude in
| India". If the reason they paid for this service is that they
| were promised a specific person, that's fraud. As simple as
| that.
|
| Your judgment about whether the services are equivalent
| doesn't matter. If I pay you for Gucci socks, and you
| intentionally send me cheaper HZBZZYXY socks from Amazon
| instead, that's fraud even if they're still socks.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| That's not what they paid for, they paid to speak to person
| x, not person y.
| boxedemp wrote:
| They paid to interact with a computer, and they did. On the
| Internet nobody knows I'm a dog, and that's ok.
| PUSH_AX wrote:
| This is not what is advertised, and if it was there would
| be no money in it.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You sound upset.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...
| 9rx wrote:
| Just wait until you find out that a MrBeast burger is not made
| by, or of!, the guy who plays MrBeast on TV either.
| otterley wrote:
| They're not passing themselves off as MrBeast.
| 9rx wrote:
| So you understand that a MrBeast burger isn't made by, or
| from, the person known as MrBeast, but when one pays to
| join the MrBeast YouTube channel you are certain the
| comments from user MrBeast are made by the person known as
| MrBeast? What's the difference?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It _is_ fraud but nobody cares anymore. Laws only matter if you
| 're defrauding rich corporations with pockets deep enough to
| actually pay lawyers to sue you over it.
| tokyobreakfast wrote:
| Prostitution is not an industry known for its ethics or
| integrity.
| elorant wrote:
| You're not paying to chat. This isn't therapy. You're paying to
| see content and the chat is supposed to be complementary for
| support reasons.
| Fricken wrote:
| Average wages in the Phillipines are around $360/month USD, so
| $2/hr isn't too bad for an easy job. BBC is playing rage-bait
| arbitrage with that headline.
| bawolff wrote:
| > She would be set targets to earn the model hundreds of dollars
| worth of sales of pictures and videos during her shift.
|
| So lets assume $300 per shift, so with an 8 hour shift, that
| would be about $37.50/hour of merchandise per hour. So the
| workers makes about 5.3%. Google says standard for sales workers
| paid on comission normally get 5-10%.
|
| So its possible this is within what would be normal for a low end
| non-salary commision job, but it depends on what "hundreds"
| really mean. Of course i think normally for commision only sales
| jobs you move much more expensive product to make it worth your
| while.
|
| Otoh they probably deserve a lot higher than normal sales
| commision given the nature of the job and all the stuff they
| undoubtedly have to put up with.
| tclancy wrote:
| Why? Why do the math on someone else's misery? What is the best
| case scenario you could have ended with?
| bawolff wrote:
| The central claim of the article seems to be that they aren't
| being compensated fairly relative to the value they bring in.
| I think its a pretty natural question to ask how their
| compensation stacks up to other industries.
| system2 wrote:
| I am still amazed that prostitution is legal when done online,
| and these teenage sex workers are allowed to continue selling
| themselves.
| beejiu wrote:
| (a) It's not prostitution, and (b) while prostitution is
| illegal in the US it's perfectly legal in the UK and many other
| countries.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| It's not illegal in the US
| ghurtado wrote:
| You're right - it's only 99.9% illegal
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_United_St
| a...
| ghurtado wrote:
| I am still amazed that there are people who think that drugs
| and prostitution will go away if we just make sure that they
| are illegal.
|
| Might as well add 'swearing' to that list.
| staringforward wrote:
| What's the point of making murder and rape illegal if people
| are still going to do it?
| I-M-S wrote:
| Murder and rape are actions imposed onto other people. As
| longer as it is voluntary, prostitution cannot be compared.
| eucyclos wrote:
| Most of the risks if traditional prostitution are absent in an
| online interaction so it's not that surprising to me.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Related: in Germany, there currently is a huge scandal
| surrounding the company "Fanblast", where you could purchase the
| supposed "whatsapp phone number" of various "celebrities" and,
| allegedly, the chats were also run by random freelancers [1].
|
| [1] https://www.comicschau.de/news/fanblast-aloa-me-klengan-
| krit...
| chaseadam17 wrote:
| Somewhat unrelated but I won't be surprised if we eventually find
| out a lot of OnlyFans revenue is money laundering.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Doubtful, there are other, less-well known pay-for-content
| platforms than take a smaller percentage cut than onlyfans. It
| wouldn't make any sense for a launderer to use the most
| expensive platform.
| chaseadam17 wrote:
| For larger operations wouldn't it be most effective to mix
| laundered money with legitimate earnings? If so that would
| make OF the top choice.
| prepend wrote:
| Isn't $2/hour a pretty high salary in Philliphines?
|
| This is skeezy (edit: fixing autocorrect's sleepy), but then so
| is chatting with onlyfans models. It's already a fake,
| paradoxical relationship and even that aspect is fake. It's
| delusions on deceptions.
| Lerc wrote:
| I have never seen sleepy used that way before.
|
| I did a quick run of the numbers and it is rather hard to tell
| what the average hourly rate is. But it look a like if you went
| for four 40 hour weeks to get 320 it seems to be a little below
| the average pay for a call center operator.
|
| In one sense this is a story of someone feeling bad about being
| paid to do something wrong.
|
| It is not quite so simple when the reason why this happens is
| the income differential between countries makes it possible for
| people to be paid enough to put aside their ethics. That
| becomes easier when the processes is normalised so that they
| are not the only person making the same compromise.
|
| Adding to the complexity of the situation is the fact that
| paying people like this puts money into the their economies and
| that can spur regional development to provide a higher pay
| level all round, causing the ethically dubious work to become
| less attractive.
|
| In the very long term the only way to avoid the higher power of
| foreign weather from doing this is to balance incomes around
| the world. That requires accepting that the current wealthy
| countries cannot get cheap things by paying poorer people low
| wages, and that means having less for themselves.
| prepend wrote:
| Sorry, autocorrect changed "skeezy" to "sleepy." I think at
| the end of the comment, too. It wasn't an immediate word or
| sentence change. I need to work harder to proof comments
| before posting. (Autocorrect changed "proof" to "prof" at the
| end of that sentence)
| chrononaut wrote:
| As an aside:
|
| > OnlyFans, which generated $7.2bn (PS5.3bn) revenue in 2024, ..
|
| I didn't expect their revenue to be that high, but I suppose it's
| also unsurprising.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| This and companies like paddy power are the breakout British
| business successes of the last few decades
| sequoia wrote:
| I find it sad that there's a story of people (mostly women) doing
| this disgusting job for little pay (yes, chatting up horny men
| online because you need the money is disgusting, there's no
| glamour and little dignity to it), and the top comment is how
| this is unfair to the _john_ (purchaser of sex work) because it
| 's misleading.
| sneak wrote:
| Sex work is work. They're not being coerced. There's no more or
| less dignity to it than being a waitress or checkout clerk.
| It's no more or less disgusting than being a hospice nurse or a
| garbage collector.
|
| It's just a job.
|
| Jobs are not inherently fraudulent, however. A deal is a deal,
| and this is plainly fraud.
|
| It _is_ unfair to the purchaser, and it is _not_ unfair to the
| people who voluntarily accept these jobs (when other jobs are
| obviously available).
| palata wrote:
| > it is not unfair to the people who voluntarily accept these
| jobs (when other jobs are obviously available).
|
| Are you saying that jobs are obviously available in this
| case, or are you saying that it is not unfair _under the
| condition that other jobs are obviously available_? That 's
| very different.
| sequoia wrote:
| > There's no more or less dignity to it than being a waitress
| or checkout clerk.
|
| Do you imagine this is how the workers feel about it? Do you
| think they tell their friends "I seduce western men online
| for pennies an hour" the same way they'd say "I am a
| waitress?" You can ignore this fact if you wish, but these
| jobs carry a social stigma and most people would prefer not
| to role play intimacy with men online if there were another
| option.
|
| "Sex work is work" is like saying slavery could theoretically
| be OK under some circumstances (We're all born under legal
| obligations, how is slavery different etc etc.). A tortured
| theoretical argument could be made to support either of
| these, but in _reality_ we know that slavery is
| unconscionable because of the indignity and brutality of it,
| regardless of theory. "Sex work" is the same: in _reality_
| it is a dangerous and unpleasant job (that overlaps with
| slavery a lot, incidentally) done mostly be vulnerable women,
| and that they 're often abused and left injured by it. See
| this article before you go saying prostitution is benign and
| harmless, this stance is divorced from reality:
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-
| trafficki...
| sneak wrote:
| "pennies an hour" sidesteps the fact that $2-3/hr is a
| fairly decent wage in the Philippines.
|
| The average hourly wage is $2.11 and the minimum wage is
| $1.36 per hour. It is likely easier work and better pay
| than being a waitress.
|
| Voluntary, harmless sex work such as that described in TFA
| has no relation whatsoever to slavery. Your crusade is out
| of place in this thread, I believe. Most working class jobs
| are unpleasant, and being a sex chat operator is probably
| one of the safest jobs one could have in the world. You
| seem to be intentionally conflating the topic at hand with
| unregulated street prostitution.
|
| > _most people would prefer not to role play intimacy with
| men online if there were another option._
|
| What does that have to do with the people who DO do these
| jobs? They plainly have other options and they work as sex
| chat operators by choice.
|
| TFA intentionally frames their wages as exploitative when
| they are median for the locale and substantially above
| minimum wage there.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| It is rather sad that a job they hate, that only pays
| ~$2/hour, is apparently the best option they have.
| tonymet wrote:
| I question tech community integrity because they will constantly
| attack Meta or Microsoft for aggressive anti-privacy, Uber for
| exploitative rates & policies but turn a blind eye to how
| corrosive & exploitative OF and PornHub are. Maybe because they
| are subscribers? Why aren't we collectively trying to shut down
| smut?
| tonymet wrote:
| As expected
| LightBug1 wrote:
| "OnlyFans, which generated $7.2bn (PS5.3bn) revenue in 2024" ...
|
| Holy mother of ... the feet business is booming.
|
| I kind of regret studying 3 years of economics ... we studied the
| rational consumer maximising their utility. Is this what that
| looks like? (LOL)
| everyone wrote:
| The most surprising thing imo is that the chatter is a real
| person and female.. I would have assumed that they were, in order
| of likelihood...
|
| 1. AI chatbot 2. A reddit mod type guy
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| lol, a job that I would support to be 100% automated by OpenAI
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Just put an ai behind it already. People will get bored of it and
| onlyfans will die by itself.
|
| If OF managements can't see what's coming, I think it's well
| deserved.
|
| Hell, there are even cases of only fans models being entirely AI.
| photo, video and chat entirely made by ai.
|
| I mean at this point you're better getting a chatgpt
| subscription, right ?
| sublinear wrote:
| > The most popular creators on the platform claim to earn
| millions of dollars per month.
|
| This has never made sense and I'm convinced these "creators" are
| a front for money laundering.
| Havoc wrote:
| Horny people will pay and much like software this scales. A
| creator can record something once and sell it 100 times
|
| Perception is definitely slanted in that only the top few
| percent make the big bucks but I have zero doubt that they make
| millions
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