An experienced child exploitation investigator told Reuters he reported 26 accounts on the popular adults-only website fan only Authorities said they appeared to contain sexual material depicting underage teens.
“What’s worrying is the scope and scale of this,” said Matt W.J. Richardson, head of intelligence at the Canadian Open Source Intelligence Centre. He said several accounts featured more than one woman who he suspected was underage.
Within a day of her report to authorities on Dec. 16, all accounts were removed from OnlyFans, said Richardson, whose organization works with law enforcement and government agencies to help combat crimes such as human trafficking and child exploitation. Trains in open source intelligence.
Richardson said she has reported 26 accounts as suspected child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a US-based clearinghouse for CSAM-related tips.
Some of the accounts were linked to each other through promotional posts, Richardson said, suggesting they may have been controlled by the same person or group.
Richardson said that photos on the accounts appear to be women with physical characteristics similar to those of women under the age of 18. Most, he said, had narrow hips and lacked physical maturity. Many, he said, had narrow shoulders or appeared to be “shorter than five feet.”
In most countries, including the US, UK and Canada, sexually explicit images of minors are banned and are against OnlyFans’ rules. On its website, OnlyFans states that it prohibits content that exploits or abuses anyone under the age of 18, even if the person under 18 is “pretending” to be an adult.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) told Reuters it could not comment on reports made on its tip line. Generally, NCMEC said, it tries to confirm whether reported webpages actively host pedophilia or exploitative material. When necessary, it notifies the company hosting the content; It is then up to the company to remove or block the content. Additionally, all tips “have been forwarded to the appropriate law enforcement agency for possible investigation,” NCMEC said.
Responding to the findings of this story, an OnlyFans spokesperson said that the company has a “zero tolerance approach” to child sexual exploitation material on the platform and “ensures that all creators are over the age of 18.” “There are strict onboarding procedures.” OnlyFans works closely with NCMEC to “thoroughly investigate any reports we receive from others regarding our platform,” the spokesperson said.
He did not answer questions about why the 26 accounts were removed only after Richardson reported them.
OnlyFans has stated that it screens all content and immediately removes and reports any suspected child sexual abuse material it detects. CEO Kelly Blair said in a speech in August that the company has a “pre-check team” that uses technology to detect content that is “highly likely to contain children”. Blair has stated that OnlyFans invests heavily in content moderation, which allows it to “focus on keeping the community safe and keeping the community only for adults”. OnlyFans also says that all content is ultimately reviewed by human moderators.
The spokesperson said OnlyFans itself made 347 reports to NCMEC in 2023, “far fewer than the millions of instances reported by other social media platforms, where users can remain anonymous and where content is unmoderated.”
OnlyFans’ 4.1 million content creators typically sell explicit images and videos for monthly subscription fees and one-time payments. The company keeps one-fifth of the revenue. The subscription effectively places paywalls on almost every OnlyFans account, making it difficult to check out the site.
In a July investigation, Reuters used US police and court records to document 30 complaints to law enforcement that child sexual abuse material appeared on OnlyFans between December 2019 and June 2024. More than 200 explicit videos and images are cited in case files examined by Reuters. Children, including some adults, engage in oral sex with young children.
OnlyFans told Reuters at the time that NCMEC had “full access” to the site behind its paywalls. But NCMEC said access to OnlyFans accounts reported on its tip line or associated with a missing child case was “limited.” Additionally, NCMEC stated that it “does not actively monitor, moderate, or actively review content at large” behind OnlyFans’ paywall.
lollipops and baby bottles emojis
In recent months, Reuters separately investigated non-explicit public profile photos, bios, and posts of OnlyFans creators who shared nearly identical promotional language in their posts. Access to the content was only open to the public without a paid OnlyFans subscription.
According to three people with professional experience identifying child exploitation, including Richardson, 49 of those accounts had female creators with non-explicit profile photos that looked like children. Richardson said that of the 26 cases he reported to NCMEC, four were identified by Reuters.
Eric Silverman, a researcher at Culture Reframed, an organization focused on raising awareness of the harms of pornography among youth, said the 49 profile photos raised serious concerns.
“Their appearance, the wide eyes, the innocent look, the finger in the mouth, these are all visual cues that reflect childhood,” he said. “Even if every one of them is 18 years of age or older, you still have to face the issue that fan only Is profiting from sexual depictions of young looking women.
These accounts are from a few months ago, i.e. till December 2023. All 49 of them were removed after Reuters contacted OnlyFans about its findings.
A company spokesperson said OnlyFans reviewed the usernames provided by Reuters. “In each case, the creators’ government identification documents were checked and verified by a third party, who confirmed that the documents are valid, and that all individuals are over the age of 18.”
The company did not answer questions about why the 49 accounts were removed. OnlyFans also did not respond when asked to identify the “third party” that verified the documents.
Reuters could not confirm the ages of the women displayed in the profiles of the 49 accounts or whether their photos had been digitally altered. OnlyFans’ website says verified creators can post their own AI-generated content, but must disclose it, including the hashtag #AI, for example. The 49 accounts identified by Reuters had no hashtags or language marking the use of AI.
The public descriptions of those accounts often included emojis such as teddy bears, lollipops or baby bottles. In their non-explicit profile photos, some women had their hair in pigtails or braids. Others had braces. Many people referred to themselves by diminutives such as “chhota,” “chhota,” “chhota” or “chhota”.
Some described themselves as “shy” or “innocent”. One profile description read, “If you came to my page, it means you love small, inexperienced girls like me!”
One profile photo was of a woman wearing a skin-tight, rainbow-colored fishnet top and on her OnlyFans page she was described as a “slender princess” who “may look innocent but is a Looking for “well experienced man”.
“She doesn’t even look 15 years old,” said Lori Cohen, CEO of Protect All Children from Trafficking, or PACT, an American nonprofit dedicated to eradicating child sexual exploitation and trafficking.
“It’s a very disturbing image,” Cohen said.
‘This is not a small scale’
Richardson said the 26 accounts he reported suggested possible coordination by content creators.
Typically, an OnlyFans creator has a public profile with one or more photos, and subscribers can log in to view explicit content associated with that creator. But in the cases examined by Richardson, creators often posted images advertising multiple other women, some of whom appeared younger, and linked to those women’s OnlyFans accounts, she said.
“This is not a small scale. It’s not like one or three or four,” Richardson said. “How many are there really?”
Of the 26 accounts Richardson reported on Dec. 16, some of the OnlyFans creators’ profile photos featured what appeared to be an adult woman, but photos posted within the accounts were of suspiciously underage women, she said. The names of their OnlyFans accounts were also included. ,
“Some of them appear to be very young and small,” he said.
He said some of the content on the 26 accounts may be “legacy CSAM”: sexually explicit photos taken when the woman was a girl but posted when she was 18 or older. Three legal experts told Reuters these would still violate laws governing child sexual abuse material.
Richardson has previously researched OnlyFans. In 2022, he and other researchers reported that they found creator profiles with “common indicators” of child sexual abuse material or sex trafficking, including keywords and other language. Shortly after their report was published, a US lawmaker entered it into the Congressional Record, the official history of Congress’s proceedings.
Of the 49 public profiles reviewed by Reuters, many account names included the words – or variations of the words – “small,” “baby,” “sweet” or “lolita.” Experts consulted by Reuters said that when those names are combined with images of young women, they could be used to advertise child sexual abuse material.
The posts sometimes referred to the women as schoolgirls or in other child-oriented terms. For example, one said: “Profanity girl @(account name edited by Reuters) ran away from school.” It continued: “Subscribe and punish him!” The account was removed on December 17, the day after Reuters contacted OnlyFans about its findings.
Bios or posts in the accounts identified by Reuters often included references to women being 18 or having just turned 18. “I’ve been waiting for a long time to turn 18 so I could register on OnlyFans and here I am,” read the profile. Of a woman, whom Cohen said appeared to be underage.
“She has a fullness to her face that is often associated with youth. “Her eyes are very big and babies have bigger eyes on their faces than adults,” Cohen said. Even if the women are actually 18, child exploitation experts say it is still a problem because the images suggest they may be younger. “It creates a demand for younger people and younger bodies,” Cohen said. “This type of behavior normalizes pedophilia.”
Three legal experts told Reuters that it was unlikely that a person could be successfully prosecuted for child sexual abuse material where an adult is presenting themselves as a minor, because the governing law generally prohibits the participants from Let’s focus on the actual age of.
Of the 49 accounts examined by Reuters, the creators often used nearly identical language to describe themselves or particular sexual acts.
“I don’t like parties or noisy clubs, I’m a homebody, Netflix and chill is my weekend,” one woman wrote in her profile. Another used remarkably similar language: “I’m not a big fan of parties and noisy clubs. I’m more of a homebody, you know? Netflix and relaxation – this is my idea of a perfect weekend.”
By mid-December, Reuters documented more than 150 instances in which identical or nearly identical language was used in posts from different accounts. Many of those posts, spanning 25 of the 49 accounts reviewed by Reuters, also shared similar combinations of emoji.
Half a dozen of those posts, said to be written by different creators, for example promised that “this beauty will play with her tight holes just for you.”
Many others promised “a beautiful doll for your warmest wishes” or a girl who is “all alone right now and in need of some fresh attention.”
