NEW YORK--An experienced child exploitation investigator told Reuters he reported 26 accounts on the popular adults-only website OnlyFans to authorities, saying they appeared to contain sexual content featuring underage teen girls.
“What is alarming is the scope and scale of it,” said Matt W.J. Richardson, head of intelligence at The Canadian Open Source Intelligence Centre. He noted that many accounts featured more than one female who he suspected was underage.
Within a day of his Dec. 16 report to authorities, all of the accounts had been removed from OnlyFans, said Richardson, whose organization trains law enforcement and government agencies in open source intelligence to help combat crimes such as human trafficking and child exploitation.
Richardson said he reported the 26 accounts as containing suspected child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the U.S.-based clearinghouse for CSAM-related tips.Some of the accounts were linked to each other through promotional posts, suggesting they may have been controlled by the same person or group, Richardson said.
The images in the accounts featured females with physical attributes typical of those under the age of 18, Richardson said. Most had narrow hips and lacked physical maturation, he said. Many had narrow shoulders or appeared to be “well short of five feet tall,” he said.
Sexually explicit images of minors are banned in most countries, including the U.S., UK, and Canada, and are against OnlyFans rules. On its website, OnlyFans says it prohibits content featuring the exploitation or abuse of anyone under 18, even if it’s adults “pretending to be” under 18.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) told Reuters it could not comment on reports made to its tip line. Generally, NCMEC said, it tries to confirm whether reported webpages actively host child sexual abuse material or exploitive content. When warranted, it notifies the company hosting the material; it's then up to the company whether to remove or block the content. In addition, all tips are “referred to the appropriate law enforcement agency for possible investigation,” NCMEC said.
Responding to the findings of this story, an OnlyFans spokesperson said the company has a “zero tolerance approach” to child sexual abuse material on the platform and has “strict onboarding processes to ensure all creators are over the age of 18.” OnlyFans works closely with NCMEC to “thoroughly investigate any reports they receive from others about our platform,” the spokesperson said.
She did not respond to a question about why the 26 accounts were taken down only after Richardson reported them.
OnlyFans has said it vets all content and swiftly removes and reports any suspected child sexual abuse material when detected. The company has a “pre-check team” that uses technology to detect content that’s “extremely likely to be a child,” CEO Keily Blair said in a speech in August. OnlyFans invests heavily in content moderation, Blair has said, which allows it to “focus on keeping the community safe and keeping the community for adults only.” OnlyFans also says all content is ultimately reviewed by human moderators.
The spokesperson noted that OnlyFans itself made 347 reports to NCMEC in 2023, “vastly fewer than the millions of instances that are reported by other social media platforms where users can remain anonymous and where content is unmoderated.”
OnlyFans’ 4.1 million content creators typically sell explicit images and videos for a monthly subscription fee, plus one-off payments. The company keeps a fifth of the revenue. The subscriptions effectively place paywalls around nearly every OnlyFans account, making the site difficult to scrutinize.
In a July investigation, Reuters used U.S. police and court records to document 30 complaints to law enforcement that child sexual abuse material appeared on OnlyFans between Dec. 2019 and June 2024. The case files examined by Reuters cited more than 200 explicit videos and images of kids, including some adults having oral sex with toddlers.
OnlyFans told Reuters at that time that NCMEC has “full access” to the site behind its paywalls. But NCMEC said access was “limited” to OnlyFans accounts reported to its tip line or connected to a missing child case. Aside from that, NCMEC said it “does not proactively monitor, moderate, or actively seek to review content at scale" behind the paywall of OnlyFans.
