Investigators believe that the OnlyFans platform, which is primarily used by sex workers, may be underreporting the number of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) on the site. In fact, law enforcement officials say that the individual payment systems that creators use to receive money prevent them from getting an accurate picture of the situation and solving crimes.
«It’s not just paid access, — said Trey Amick, director of forensic consultants Magnet Forensics. «It’s paid access for every member. In addition, it is extremely difficult to obtain content that is hosted behind OnlyFans».
The same opinion is shared by child exploitation investigator Matt Richardson:
«It is really difficult to know specifically or precisely how much there is».
According to Reuters, of the 30 CSAM-related cases reviewed on OnlyFans, more than half resulted in arrests and three resulted in criminal convictions.
At the same time, OnlyFans says it is helping to combat child sexual exploitation on the platform. According to a spokesperson for OnlyFans, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a nonprofit organization established by Congress in 1984, has «full access». The company also intentionally provides the police with most of the data, including content and direct messages.
However, this only applies to accounts that are under active investigation. It appeared that any other accounts that have not received charges will remain behind paid access. A 2021 BBC report found that teenagers used fake documents to create accounts on OnlyFans.
This is a rather difficult dilemma. On the one hand, it is crucial to protect children from sexual exploitation. On the other hand, giving law enforcement free access to a site where users pay for lascivious content creates clear privacy issues — and one can only guess whether the police will actually use the access for purely professional purposes.
Source: futurism