Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in March 2021.
With the rise of freelance marketplaces such as OnlyFans, hundreds of thousands of sex workers are taking more control over their direct sales and bypassing traditional marketplaces such as strip clubs and porn studios. Performers can choose what type of content to make, how they promote it and who they sell it to. Some see this development as a tool for liberation, furthering the progress of fourth-wave feminism by subversively using tools such as social media to challenge censorship and claim self-sovereignty.
But for many sex workers, corporate platforms aren’t revolutionary at all. Censorship, technology failures and heavy-handed fees are just a few of the drawbacks of using social platforms for sex work. Rather than rely solely on mainstream services such as OnlyFans, which keeps 20 percent of performers’ earnings, some sex workers use corporate networks only for advertising and conduct their real business on their own websites, which they build and control.
Such is the case for dominatrix coder and transgender camgirl Niki Flux, who uses Pornhub and Twitter to attract audiences to her own websites, where she manages payment processing and other technical infrastructure, reducing her vulnerability to censorship. “Any of the sites can kick you off without any explanation or recourse, totally on a whim,” Flux says.Allie Awesome, an adult-content creator, told Rolling Stone in a May 2020 article that her OnlyFans account was temporarily shut down when a customer allegedly demanded a refund, and other performers claim they have been banned without warning. In addition to dealing with charge-back complaints and avoiding words deemed “obscene,” some OnlyFans performers say they have lost their funds when hackers targeted their accounts.
By running her own website, Flux avoids the hefty fees levied by sites such as OnlyFans and Chaturbate, the latter of which charges performers roughly 50 percent of their earnings. Using her own website means she can fix technical issues promptly. In contrast, Chaturbate users report routine outages, and the OnlyFans messaging service, where performers earn tips and receive requests for custom orders, frequently fails. To make matters worse, it can be hard for performers to keep people from sharing content from behind OnlyFans’ paywall or making impersonation accounts. As a work-around Flux and other sex workers are coding their own tools that they can control—including, in Flux’s case, using Bitcoin to receive international payments without relying on a bank.
Flux began dabbling in online sex work in 2011, camming as she transitioned to publicly identifying as a woman and going from a clandestine BDSM hobbyist to an out-of-the-closet dominatrix. Flux was already a professional coder whose primary corporate jobs related to 3D modeling and animation, and she soon decided to focus on coding for herself. She built her own website, and she has since created software tools for several other sex workers.
“I’ve been coding since I was eight, but I’ve felt a lot more exploited in coding work than in sex work,” Flux says. “I think, as a domme, you learn to trust your own judgment more.”
Hosting her own content means Flux can offer kinkier content without worrying about the restrictions imposed by mainstream platforms. Being a programmer has quickly become the cornerstone of her BDSM play. Some submissives might ask her to take control of their devices and drain their accounts, or describe in detail how she could use devices to track them down.
Financial-domination professional Bardot Smith says she has been making websites since 2010. Before she started coding, Smith graduated from an Ivy League school and worked at a Washington, D.C. consulting firm. She started a hobby blog that complemented a text-messaging service, where she told fans about her dating life to fulfill their cuckold fetish. She quickly realized she could earn more money from these sexy text messages and blog posts than nonsexual services—including her day job. Moreover, she enjoyed the autonomy it gave her. “[My blog] came from my desire to express myself through the internet,” Smith says. “I like having full control.”
Many independent sex workers face widespread discrimination, including from tech companies that might work with mainstream porn platforms or stores selling sex products. Smith, for example, is banned from Cash App, Stripe, Dwolla, Braintree and Shopify, forcing her to find—or create—alternative tools and services.
“It’s not illegal to charge someone to text them about my sex life. The platforms don’t care if it’s illegal; they care if it’s ‘obscene,’” Smith says. “They are forcing us to use platforms that exploit us. Either these things are legal and we can have access to the same payment processors as everyone else does, or they’re not. They shouldn’t be discriminating.”
Over the past five years, Smith taught herself how to code the tools she needs to keep working. Sometimes she uses Bitcoin, but she also uses a range of jerry-rigged setups for dollar payments.
The fear of being deplatformed and becoming a digital untouchable across portals from Facebook to Shopify defines the adult industry. Deplatforming has become more common since former President Donald Trump signed the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) in 2018. That’s why top OnlyFans performer Jasmine Rice, a graduate of the prestigious Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania, is careful to keep her OnlyFans persona separate from her other jobs. She avoids sexual content on her real social-media accounts.
“OnlyFans is a considerable portion of my income, but it’s not my only income,” Rice says. “I have a full-time job and I am also working at a startup. I work in finance.”
Rice joined OnlyFans in March 2020 and quickly became a top earner by highlighting her goofy yet educated persona and posting chaste content like singing and playing her keyboard. She doesn’t post nudes or sexual scenes, only solo pics and clips. She knows her PG-13 content may not attract mainstream porn audiences, but she prefers to choose how risqué—or tame—she wants to be online.
“I really understand myself and what I am comfortable with showing,” Rice says. “It’s making a trade-off to define what kind of demand you want to focus on.”
Rice, however, often has issues using the OnlyFans platform. She says OnlyFans support staff doesn’t respond to her requests for help when unknown users steal her exclusive content and circulate it online.“I’ve heard about girls having their [OnlyFans] accounts shut down with no recourse and their money is just gone,” she says.
Rice is now working on her own platform, which isn’t related to the adult industry. Her case encapsulates the conundrum many tech-savvy women face. Rice, especially as a woman of color from an immigrant family that has relied on SNAP benefits, has more access to sexual capital than venture capital. She can earn enough to bootstrap her own startup by marketing her feminine wiles on Twitter and OnlyFans, potentially transferring those relationships to other payment methods. But she is aware that the dozens of trolls who steal her content from OnlyFans might doxx her and harm her opportunities in the business sphere.
“Society hates sex workers and that they make money, so we like to think they are bad or desperate people—someone who is lazy or unskilled,” Rice says. “I’ve been called this, too, just for having an OnlyFans.”
Smith says finance and tech companies, by not recognizing that many sex workers can also create and run their own sites, are missing out on a pool of freelance talent with unique skills, in addition to investment-worthy entrepreneurs. Flux says she’s happier since she quit the corporate grind. Rather than hide her leather and chains, she prefers to work independently.
“A lot of people do sex work as a side job in addition to their day jobs, so we have a wide range of skills,” Smith says. “Sex workers are all around you, even if you don’t know it.”