Gus Palmer/BBC
Warning: contains details of violence that some readers might find distressing
Rebecca, an OnlyFans creator, joined an agency after they promised to help her earn more on the adult social media platform – instead, they abused her, threatened her daughter and dispatched violent masked men to attack her at home, she says.
“They were lovely at the beginning.”
But within weeks they turned “quite controlling”, insulting her appearance and forbidding her from going out with her friends, she tells BBC Three documentary OnlyFans: Inside the Machine.
The abusive behaviour escalated after she changed her account login details, worried the agency – which could access her account – would lock her out, she says.
“I will have you and your daughter wrote off,” said one message seen by the BBC.
A brick smashed her window and, a few weeks later, two masked men arrived at her house. One came inside, she says, strangled her and threw her “up and down the stairs”. She shows the BBC photos of bruises over her legs and throat.
Her ordeal forms part of a pattern of allegations against agents, self-styled online as OnlyFans managers (OFMs). They promise to help creators grow their businesses on the platform but, BBC findings show, are sometimes exploitative and threatening.
We heard from 60 UK OnlyFans creators and embedded ourselves in one of the largest private Telegram groups for agents, called OFM Empire, which has 24,000 members.
There, we found advice on signing creators, taking control of their accounts and reaping profits – often using the threat of violence. One user called this the “pimp method”.
OnlyFans has known about concerns about over-exploitative OFMs for at least four years, when allegations about agencies first surfaced in the international press.
But, for the first time, our investigation focuses on the UK, where OnlyFans is based. It shows the platform is not doing enough to protect creators from exploitation, according to the human rights experts and lawyers who have seen our findings.
“What Rebecca experienced are all recognised signs of exploitation – control, coercion, financial pressure and an inability to leave freely,” the UK’s independent anti-slavery commissioner, Eleanor Lyons, tells the BBC.
“It is something that the government needs to look at in more detail… we potentially have a platform which is enabling exploitation, enabling abuse.”
An OnlyFans spokesperson said: “The allegation we ‘turn a blind eye’ [to these issues] is unfounded.”
The company takes user safety “incredibly seriously” and invests “heavily” in measures to protect its community, the spokesperson continued, adding that it meets all its duties under the Online Safety Act.
“OnlyFans’ relationship is with our creators and fans and we are not connected with, and do not endorse, any third parties including management agencies.
“Unfortunately, we cannot review or influence any contractual relationships creators choose to enter into outside the platform as we are not party to them.”
More than 4.6 million OnlyFans creators worldwide upload videos and photos for their paying subscribers. The platform takes a 20% cut.
One of the UK’s social media success stories, the company that operates OnlyFans, Fenix International Limited, reported annual pre-tax profits of $684m (£513m) in its latest filing.
A global ecosystem of OFMs has grown alongside the platform, chasing the success. They promise to attract more subscribers and boost earnings – and, in exchange, OFMs take a proportion of the creators’ pre-tax earnings, commonly 50%.
Gia Clarke, a UK creator who has been posting on OnlyFans since its launch 10 years ago, says she receives more messages from OFMs than from fans.
“The concept [of OFMs] is really good, it’s just that there are too many unqualified people… because there are no regulations, the models don’t know who to trust,” she says, describing some OFMs as “predatory”.
Creators’ OFM contracts shared with the BBC show managers taking up to 70% of earnings. Many demand full access to account logins and impose fines on creators who try to leave contracts early.
“They [OFMs] are taking advantage… which is almost placing these content creators in servitude to the agents and agencies, trapped in a contract which is unfair,” says Matt Jury of human rights specialist law firm, McCue Jury & Partners.
Sophie Kemp, head of public law at Kingsley Napley, agrees: “This isn’t really a fair contract situation at all. They seem to be the first step in the road to exploiting creators.”
Several of the 60 creators we spoke to say their managers had accessed their accounts and then lied about their earnings to pocket more money. One says their manager had changed their password to lock them out. Another says their OFM changed the bank details on the account so money went directly to the manager.
Similar tactics are openly discussed on the OFM Empire Telegram channel.
“Create an email and password for their [OnlyFans]. They can’t log in,” one user says. “I have access to their [payment platform] under their name again [in] my created email. And password. I have full control of everything.”
OnlyFans has “strict onboarding processes, payment controls and ongoing account moderation”, the company spokesperson says. If concerns about an account are raised, OnlyFans will immediately restrict the account, investigate, and take action to ensure the creator is in control of their account, they added.
But when a female BBC reporter set up an account with a verified photo, she was able to use a male colleague’s bank account details to receive test payments.
OnlyFans told the BBC that: “In the UK, where a creator requests a payout from their OnlyFans accounts, our third-party payment providers undertake confirmation of payee checks when processing that payment. Where this check is not successful the payment will be rejected.”
Rebecca says she changed her OnlyFans password after a friend with the same OFM had her login details changed by them without her consent, blocking her out of the account.
The mother-of-one says abusive phone calls and messages followed.
“He’s sending me my own address, telling me how he’s gonna swing me and my daughter around by our hair,” says Rebecca.
“See you soon whore,” read another message seen by the BBC.
A brick smashed through Rebecca’s window a few days later, she says, and although she called the police, she was too scared to mention the OnlyFans agency.
She describes being attacked, three weeks later, when two masked men came to her house.
“They [one of the men] were on top of me, strangling me, and I just tried getting my phone to ring somebody because I thought, this is it.
“After they proved their point, they stopped and left.”
Rebecca is convinced both incidents were connected to her manager. “I’ve got no bad blood with anybody else.”
She is not the only creator we spoke to who says they have faced threats.
Another woman, who asked to remain anonymous, says she initially agreed to give up between 35% and 40% of her earnings, but later decided that was too high.
“He told me that if I want to drop [the] percentage then I have to pay him £10,000 because of how much time and effort he’s put into me.”
When she refused, she says, her manager said she would “get what’s coming to you”.
“Is he gonna come to my house? Is he going to delete my account? He used to tell me stories of what he’s done to other girls, like how he’s got their accounts deleted, how he sent lawyers to the house,” she says.
“I’d get the odd message every week – you’re gonna get what’s coming to you. Just you wait, it’s coming.” She has since left this manager.
Leanne, 33, signed a contract that gave her manager access to her account and the ability to change the email address on it, as well as 50% of her pre-tax earnings – after OnlyFans had taken its cut.
The contract, seen by the BBC, said she would be required to fulfil subscribers’ requests for content within 24 hours.
She says she told her manager when she signed that she would not make explicit videos – but she says they constantly pressured her to do them.
She finally agreed to film one to “shut them up”, she says, provided it was not sold to her followers for less than $250 (£187). She felt “physically sick” after filming the video and did not even watch it, she says.
Leanne later discovered it had been sold for less than $40 (£30).
“It just made me feel so disgusting and so degraded,” she says. She is no longer posting on OnlyFans.
OnlyFans has known about concerns regarding over-exploitative OFMs via media coverage, but we also know of at least one creator who has directly tried to make the company aware.
Riley alerted the platform to discussions in OFM Empire that suggested agents were buying and selling creators’ contracts without creators knowing.
“The tactics of these groups consistently grow more and more exploitative,” she wrote in an email to the OnlyFans support team in 2024, seen by the BBC.
She was asked to provide evidence, and sent links to OFM Empire and screengrabs of messages on the forum.
“Any bad actors exploiting creators” should be reported to OnlyFans, and where necessary the police, the platform told the BBC, so they “can be held accountable and appropriate action can be taken against them to protect our creator community”.
The UK’s anti-slavery commissioner, Eleanor Lyons, says OnlyFans has a legal duty to protect users from illegal content and to act swiftly to remove it when it becomes aware.
“It’s alarming that cases of exploitation are being reported but appear to be not properly acted on,” she says when we show her Riley’s emails. “That raises serious concerns about whether OnlyFans is meeting its legal duties to protect users.”
Lyons says she is “already engaging with” Ofcom – the UK watchdog for online safety – and policymakers, who “need to pay much closer attention”.
OFMs should face greater scrutiny and potentially be licensed, she adds.
Ofcom told us that testimony from victims featured in this investigation was “deeply concerning”.
“Regulated sites and apps, such as OnlyFans, must assess the risk of their services being used to facilitate the commission of offences,” it said in a statement. “Any offences which take place entirely offline, however, are not caught by the Online Safety Act.”
Lily Phillips, one of the highest earning UK creators on OnlyFans, says a lack of regulation around OFMs creates “a dangerous space where vulnerable people can be taken advantage of”.
“People realise how much money you can make from OnlyFans. So, you know, everyone wants a piece of the pie, especially men… they want their little piece,” she says.
Sophie Kemp, from Kingsley Napley law firm, says OnlyFans has a duty of care to its creators and, based on our evidence, she believes “it is only a matter of time before OnlyFans faces claims of negligence from creators who have suffered harm”.
Rebecca says she wanted to prove her old agency wrong by making a success of her work OnlyFans.
She is now signed with an agency where the content is handled by women, which she says makes her “feel a lot better”.
Being an OnlyFans creator “is not going to be a forever thing”, she says, and one day she hopes to have made enough money to perhaps own her own horse-riding school.
- If you have more information about this story, you can email Natasha Cox at natasha.cox@bbc.co.uk
