TikTok has been accused of helping to promote the sex industry, according to research by UK-based organisation Cease and Australia’s Collective Shout. The study, titled 'TikTok to OnlyFans pipeline', analysed non-explicit content posted over a year by popular young female OnlyFans creators.
Researchers claim that women hid coded references to pornography in 'girl lifestyle' content. Such content showed women shopping, playing with pets, baking or giving skincare advice. Although mentioning OnlyFans or directly linking to the platform from TikTok accounts is prohibited, the report states that euphemisms, emojis and crude gestures were used to indicate that adult content was available for sale on other platforms.
The platform distributes so-called 'safe-for-work' material produced by popular OnlyFans creators. The report analyses how traces of adult content were hidden in widely shared TikTok videos featuring OnlyFans stars in 'get ready with me' (GRWM) posts. Creators can use the word 'corn' instead of 'porn' or add a corn emoji next to a star emoji to avoid content being blocked.
Researchers spent months reviewing posts by a number of key 'sexfluencers' and tracking TikTok’s algorithm recommendations. In viral posts, OnlyFans creators told their TikTok followers about the money they had earned from selling sexual content. The report notes that one of the most common messages in these posts is that selling sexual services on OnlyFans provides a 'miraculous life' filled with freedom, fun, friendship and lots of money. Many posts promoted this message with images of cash, large houses, private jets and expensive cars, with captions including 'how it feels knowing I own all of this at 23 thanks to 250,000 men'.
In some posts, OnlyFans was presented as a solution to poverty and unemployment through 'rags to riches' stories. Opening an OnlyFans account was marketed as a solution that 'saves women and girls from bleak, unprivileged lives'. OnlyFans data shows that its top 5,000 creators have each earned more than one million dollars on the site since the platform launched in 2016, while the average earnings of its five million registered performers are estimated at around 1,000 dollars a year.
Melinda Tankard Reist from Collective Shout condemned TikTok as an 'industrial digital pimp that funnels girls into the sex industry'. Tankard Reist said that young women and girls deserve protection from a predatory industry that trains them to be producers of explicit content.
The research was commissioned in response to the finding that OnlyFans stars such as Sophie Rain and Ari Kytsya have a huge number of followers on TikTok among teenagers. Sophie Rain became famous for content filmed at 'Bop House', a luxury pornography production house in Miami. Bop House is home to a rotating group of women who sell sexual content on OnlyFans, and auditions for joining are shared on TikTok, with potential recruits responding by posting sexually suggestive dances tagged Bop House recruitment.
OnlyFans creators rely on building followers on TikTok and other social media. The report focuses on the links between TikTok and OnlyFans because TikTok has a high proportion of young users and because it is where many OnlyFans careers begin. Many OnlyFans stars do brand promotion alongside lifestyle content on TikTok, advertising household items such as pet food, hamburgers and pineapple juice, as well as sex toys and condoms.
Global cosmetics brand L'Oréal appointed Ari Kytsya, who calls herself a 'mattress actress', as a brand ambassador for Urban Decay last year. Urban Decay is a makeup brand popular among teenagers and is sold globally. In these ads, viewed millions of times on TikTok, Kytsya calls for makeup that works well on beds.
The report’s authors called for the extension of the ban on showing explicitly pornographic content to people under 18, which exists in many countries, to include posts that promote the sex industry or are linked to it. A TikTok spokesperson said: 'TikTok strictly prohibits the sharing or display of sexual content and we use advanced technologies to enforce our community guidelines.' He added: 'In addition, our systems are designed to prevent age-inappropriate content from reaching teenagers.'
