Aside from the recent Reuters expose about non-consensual
trafficking, there's unrest over at OnlyFans, and my buddy Leonid Radvinsky's
in the news with a mass boycott going on in the ranks.
The Rolling Stone reports that Radvinky, the billionaire
owner of OnlyFans and his wife pledged $11M to the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee, AIPAC. It's not going over very well with pro-Palestinian
content creators.
Reports Rolling Stone: "While Radvinsky denied making
such a donation, some OnlyFans creators have taken issue with the notion that
the revenue they generate for the platform is potentially being transferred to
the coffers of the powerful pro-Israel lobby.
"AIPAC recently launched a $100 million effort to
defeat pro-Palestinian candidates in the 2024 election cycle, and has been
heavily lobbying Congress to maintain unconditional support for Israel’s war in
Gaza.
According to the article, "Radvinsky’s alleged
donations to AIPAC were the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for
the fed-up creators who are now calling for a strike and boycott."
BodyXBlunts, a creator who has chosen to leave OnlyFans and
is involved in the organization of the boycott, tells Rolling Stone that sex
workers and adult content creators have every reason to empathize with Palestinians
in their own struggle.
“As an activist, as a sex worker, we want decriminalization
because we want safety. They want safety and freedom. If we can’t understand
that, who can? To be in solidarity with them is easy. It takes no brain power,
it takes no hard willpower, it doesn’t and hasn’t. Not since this happened, not
at all.”
According to Molly Simmons, a creator who recently left
OnlyFans and has become a leading figure in the boycott, “hundreds” of creators
have joined the exodus — and organizers are hoping for many more.
Creators who have joined the boycott in the aftermath of the
Radvinsky news have relied on word of mouth, direct outreach, and social media
sites like X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram to promote their call to action.
“We are an autonomous group of sex workers and content
creators calling for a dual strike and boycott of the OnlyFans platform in
protest of their owner’s financial support of the Palestinian genocide,” a
document produced by the boycott’s leaders says. “For sex workers and content
creators, we are urging that you migrate to alternative fan sites and
subscription services for your work. For clients and fans, we are urging that
you delete your OnlyFans account and support your favorite creators on their
alternative fan sites.”
Simmons tells Rolling Stone that she “totally [understands]
why someone who makes like $100,000 on OnlyFans is not going to give up that
income, but that’s the vast, vast minority of people. The average OnlyFans user
makes $2,000 a year.” In her view, the key to convincing creators to divest
from OnlyFans isn’t just the questionable politics of its owner but the fact
that the platform itself is trash.
“Whether it’s their genius marketing or divine intervention,
[OnlyFans] has become the household name, even though OnlyFans as a platform —
Zionism aside — sucks,” she says. “It’s the worst one. It’s terrible.”
Radvinsky took over OnlyFans in 2018. Under his mantel, the
platform has a long, contentious history of mistreating sex workers and adult
content creators that represent a significant — if not dominant — portion of
its content. The 20-percent fee it takes from creators’ earnings is already a
lot, but in 2021 Radvinsky briefly attempted to purge NSFW content from the
site entirely, leaving creators under a cloud of worry that the most popular
platform for their line of work can boot them with little notice.
In their mission statement, the boycott’s organizers call
out the many pitfalls of OnlyFans, including “low video quality, poor support,
no clip store, [and] no loyalty referral program,” adding that “sex workers are
used to having multiple platforms in order to avoid deletion, surveillance, and
to maximize profit. What we’re doing now is asking you to take that leap. If
you’ve been thinking about switching platforms, now’s the time.”
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