In the summer of 2021, probably the world’s largest sex work platform, OnlyFans announced that it would be banning creators from posting sexual content. The platform which rose to prominence in the pandemic, allows people to monetise the content they produce, gathering payment in exchange for access to pictures, videos and communication channels. Today, there are around 1.5 millions creators on OnlyFans, and many of them are reliant on the platform to enable them to survive – to cover their everyday needs. The decision was ultimately reversed and OnlyFans remains the largest and best known remote sex work platform, but this example serves to highlight the precarious position of sex workers working online. The rug can be pulled from under your feet at any time, without any meaningful way for you as a worker to contest or shape decisions as to what kinds of content are allowed.

In the next few episodes of the Fairwork podcast, we’ll be exploring the world of online sex work. In this episode we start with an interview with a worker on OnlyFans. We’ll hear his story of making it on the platform, and the realities of make a living online. After that we’ll speak to Dr Helen Rand, senior lecturer in Criminology at the University of Greenwich, where we discuss the broader implications surrounding the platformisation of online sex work.

You can play the brilliant OnlyBans game here: onlybansgame.com/play

Helen Rand's paper 'Challenging the Invisibility of Sex Work in Digital Labour Politics' can be found here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0141778919879749

You can find info on UCU Strikes here: https://www.ucu.org.uk/rising

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