OnlyFans Contains Child Sexual Abuse Material Of Toddlers And Teens, According To Reports

Porn-driven website OnlyFans has been found to contain explicit content of minors despite its claims to build the "safest digital media platform in the world," according to a new investigative report.

Reuters has exposed OnlyFans' involvement in child sexual abuse material (CSAM) after documenting 30 complaints from U.S. police and court records of CSAM from December 2019 and June 2024. According to the news agency, they "cited more than 200 explicit videos and images of kids, including some adults having oral sex with toddlers." In another case, a minor stayed on OnlyFans for over a year.

After 16-year-old girl from Florida went missing in 2023, her parents found nude photos and videos of herself to 22-year-old Ethan Diaz, who appeared to have abducted her. Police found that Diaz posted explicit content of the girl on OnlyFans. One video showed the teen penetrating herself and was advertised for $20. The caption read, “Watch me get super wild." Diaz was charged with human trafficking and other offenses.

In the 30 cases reviewed by Reuters, over half resulted in an arrest and criminal convictions. Most of the adults involved in CSAM were accused of preying on and exploiting minors to create pornographic material and profit from it. In other cases, minors somehow bypassed OnlyFans vetting to sell their own explicit content. And "in the case involving toddlers, a man used the site to send another man more than 100 files featuring the abuse of children of all ages," Reuters added.

Despite these findings, OnlyFans asserts that it is strictly for adults, with measures to monitor users, vet content, and remove and report CSAM. "We know the age and identity of everyone on our platform," said CEO Keily Blair in a 2023 speech. "No children allowed, nobody under 18 on the platform."

Is it possible that OnlyFans has more CSAM than we think? Due to its paywall model, the site makes it more difficult for police to detect CSAM. In fact, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) only received access to OnlyFans in late 2023. And, per ArsTechnica, the organization seemingly can't scan the entire platform at once, telling Reuters that its access was "limited" exclusively "to OnlyFans accounts reported to its CyberTipline or connected to a missing child case."

In 2023, OnlyFans made 347 CyberTipline reports “out of hundreds of millions of posts," a "testament to the rigorous safety controls OnlyFans has in place,” their spokesperson said. They explained that most of the suspected material “does not turn out to be CSAM” or "are duplicate images or videos." Still, specialists in CSAM informed Reuters the actual amount of CSAM is difficult to verify due to the individual paywalls, with OnlyFans currently boasting over 3 million creators. Trey Amick, director of forensic consultants at Magnet Forensics Inc., told Reuters, “It’s not just one paywall. It’s a paywall for each and every contributor.”

As part of its vetting process, OnlyFans told Reuters that potential creators must provide at least 9 personally identifying information and documents and "a selfie while holding a government photo ID, and – in the United States – a Social Security number."

"All this is verified by human judgment and age-estimation technology that analyzes the selfie," OnlyFans said. But Reuters discovered that the verification process didn't work 100% of the time, nor did it stop predators from uploading CSAM. The vetting also failed when minors signed up. One girl told Reuters she had used an adult acquaintance's driver's license to sign up and soon began making money.

When her mother found her account, she claimed she reported the CSAM to OnlyFans, even offering to provide the child's birth certificate. She then received a message from OnlyFans stating they would investigate the matter and get back to her, but the minor's account remained on the website for weeks. “I kept checking it every day, and it was still up there,” the mother said. “They never reached back out to me.”

The mother contacted the police in Baltimore County, Maryland, to press charges against OnlyFans for reportedly exploiting a minor, but the officer said that she couldn't “because he wouldn’t even know who to write the charge up against." She called the FBI, and a county police detective finally took them down. The teen's account was closed within a few weeks.

OnlyFans has promoted debauchery and the exploitation of one's body, and the site's creators have seemingly influenced teens to make CSAM. OnlyFans “presents itself as a platform that provides unrivaled access to influencers, celebrities, and models,” said Elly Hanson, a clinical psychologist and researcher fighting against sexual abuse and its impact. “This is an attractive mix to many teens, who are pulled into its world of commodified sex, unprepared for what this entails.”

OnlyFans declined to comment when Reuters inquired how kids bypassed age verification, how CSAM evaded detection, and whether they "kept its revenue from accounts involving minors."

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