People have mixed feelings about the subscription-based platform, OnlyFans. The platform is primarily known for its explicit adult content — and for good reason, as approximately 80% of the content on the platform is exactly that. But what OnlyFans does well is ensure that all that content being shared is done with consent.
OnlyFans porn star Bonnie Blue, whose real name is Tia Billinger, learned that the hard way. Earlier this year, she filmed herself having sex with 1,057 men in less than twelve hours — and posted the footage to OnlyFans. But it didn’t stay there long.
The platform scrubbed all footage of the sex stunt she posted and issued the following statement: “To keep our community safe, OnlyFans also verifies the age, identity, and consent of all parties featured in explicit content on OnlyFans. We do not allow a large number of non-OnlyFans creators to be featured on an account even where release forms have been provided.”
OnlyFans won’t just remove the content – it often will ban users if they violate the consent rules. In Blue’s case, it seems that the problem was the sheer number of people to keep track of. But for others, posting content to OnlyFans without everyone’s consent is intentional — and sometimes, illegal.
One Australian woman is learning that the hard way.
The woman, who has remained unnamed, was found guilty of sharing intimate images of herself and her former partner on OnlyFans after he withdrew his consent. Magistrate Ian Temby who presided over the case said it was complicated because the victim initially did consent to sharing the images on the platform while the pair was together, but after they broke up in 2022 he demanded she remove them.
The woman ignored his request, and went as far as posting his letter of request to Instagram along with a few comments like: “I ain’t getting rid of s***.” and “Hope you realise you fkd (sic) with the wrong b****.”
The man decided to hire an attorney to more formally request that she stop sharing the images because he no longer consented, as well payment for the profit she did make from the initial sharing of the images.
Again, the woman did not comply and instead took to Instagram to say, “HERE WE FKN (sic) GOOOOO, lost your power so you gotta (sic) pull this move ha ha ha ha weakkkkk (sic).”
So it was clear that the woman knew exactly what she was doing when she continued to leave the images up, but the key factor that Magistrate Temby had to consider was that the victim had originally consented and then changed his mind. One argument was that the victim’s reputation would be damaged if the photos were allowed to stay up, but as he consented initially, he knew it was a possibility.
The magistrate said, “His is a different experience to someone who, for example, made an intimate video only for private use but had their partner share the video publicly. However that does not mean the complainant could not feel harassed and menaced by the continued distribution of the image once he withdrew his consent.”
Magistrate Temby admitted that he took concerns about the woman’s mental health into account, and ultimately spared her jail time. Instead, she ended up with a suspended sentence of five months and 12 days after being convicted of aggravated non-consensual distribution of intimate images.