By Jason Szep, Linda So, Rosa Furneaux and Andrew R.C. Marshall
Denver, Colorado, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Melinda Lam´s husband had a secret.
Lam said she discovered it after a credit card payment for her son´s karate lessons was declined in December 2021. That led the 46-year-old pharmacist from Colorado to check the accounts she shared with her husband.
At least six credit cards were maxed out, she said, and nearly $40,000 had been drained from their savings. One card statement suggested where the money might have gone.
"It says OnlyFans, OnlyFans, OnlyFans," recalled Lam, who was then undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer.
Her husband would ultimately spend $135,000 on porn creators on OnlyFans, a subscription-based website, according to Lam and records she shared with Reuters. She said she was preparing to file for bankruptcy - and
https://globalbett.app/ finalizing a divorce.
"Not only was it shocking," she said, "it was devastating."
OnlyFans and its supporters portray the platform as a safe and empowering outlet for lucrative, socially acceptable sex work. Nurses, teachers, police officers and Olympic athletes have posted racy content in pursuit of extra cash.
As OnlyFans takes porn into the mainstream, however, the platform also has generated ripple effects that have upended lives in unexpected and sometimes traumatizing ways.
Reuters reported some of the most direct harms in investigations that exposed child sexual
abuse material and nonconsensual or "revenge porn" posted on the site. Those findings were drawn from police complaints obtained from more than 250 of the largest U.S. law enforcement agencies.
But the files also reveal collateral harms: families torn apart, reputations threatened, finances ruined.
Aside from Melinda Lam, who said her husband´s porn-buying spree destroyed her marriage, the police files describe a creator who unwittingly made sex videos for a close relative; women and girls shocked to find their likenesses stolen to sell porn; and passersby who found naked men making porn in public for their "fans." Another creator filmed himself in lewd acts with a dog.
"There´s something different happening with OnlyFans," said Meagan Tyler, a researcher at Australia´s La Trobe University, who specializes in harms against women in porn. "It´s really affecting norms and even our everyday experiences in public places, in private homes, in relationships - and it´s having that effect even if we´ve never visited the site ourselves."
OnlyFans didn´t respond to questions about Lam´s case or others in this story. On its website, however, OnlyFans says it´s building the world´s safest digital media platform for creators to express "their most authentic selves." In a speech last year, CEO Keily Blair described OnlyFans as a "real community" where creators and subscribers had "nicer, kinder, more supportive conversations" than on other platforms.
During their interactions with subscribers, creators sell customized content and solicit extra money in tips. It´s proved a winning formula: By offering to make creators richer and consumers less lonely, OnlyFans has enjoyed huge success in monetizing porn - a product otherwise widely available online for free - and helped to revolutionize the business.
OnlyFans earned $1.3 billion in revenue in 2023 alone. Top creators earn millions of dollars a year and their success has spawned a freewheeling industry of promoters and talent agencies. In a sign of the site´s growing influence, planes this summer pulled banners advertising OnlyFans creators over beaches in Florida and Alabama.
Less visible are the unsuspecting victims caught up in OnlyFans when users break social norms - or the law.
Here are their stories.
A MARRIAGE IMPLODES
After discovering her husband´s credit card spending in January 2022, Melinda Lam decided not to confront him right away. She said she was too ill from chemotherapy and radiation treatments. "I didn´t have any energy.
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