404 Media

2026-05-05 14:11:49

UK iPhone and iPad Users Can Watch Porn Again

Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub and other major porn sites, announced today that in the UK, iPhone and iPad users will be able to access its sites again, ending an over three month ban that Aylo initially enacted because of the region’s age verification law.

As of Tuesday, following the iOS 26.4 rollout in the UK, users on the new operating system can visit Pornhub and Aylo’s other sites from their iPhones.

On April 29, Apple announced that it would start requiring mobile users to confirm ages on their devices to check if they’re 18 or older: “You can confirm your age with a credit card that belongs to you, or by scanning your passport, driving licence, or one of the following PASS-accredited Proof of Age cards: CitizenCard, My ID Card, TOTUM ID card or Young Scot National Entitlement Card. Debit cards and gift cards aren't supported,” according to Apple. Web content filters and communication safety tools are turned on automatically for children, as well as adults who haven’t confirmed their age, Apple wrote.

Many UK Users Soon Won’t Be Able to Access Pornhub
Starting February 2, many people connecting from the UK will not be able to access the porn site and many others.
404 MediaSamantha Cole

In January, Aylo announced that starting February 2 it would restrict people visiting the site from the UK. Leadership at Aylo and Ethical Capital Partners (ECP), which acquired Aylo in 2023, said at the time that the UK’s Online Safety Act was a failure. Before January, UK-based visitors to Aylo sites—which include RedTube, YouPorn, Brazzers, and many more—had to verify their ages by entering a credit card or uploading a government ID or other identification to an age estimation system called All Pass Trust. After February, anyone in the UK not already verified was locked out of those sites.

Age Verification Laws Drag Us Back to the Dark Ages of the Internet
Invasive and ineffective age verification laws that require users show government-issued ID, like a driver’s license or passport, are passing like wildfire across the U.S.
404 MediaEmanuel Maiberg

Experts say site-based age verification is both ineffective at stopping minors from viewing harmful content as it drives them from lawful sites to harmful, unregulated ones, and also chills adults’ abilities to work online as adult performers and consume legal adult entertainment online. The adult industry has been lobbying for device-based verification and parental controls, which often already exists as an optional feature on most devices children might have access to, as an alternative. Device-level age verification remains controversial among free speech and internet access groups.

In the UK, the Online Safety Act, which went into effect in 2025, requires sites to implement age verification or face millions of dollars in fines and jail—or up to 10 percent of global revenues, whichever is higher. In the US, more than half of states have strict age verification laws in place, and in many of those states, Aylo blocks access and directs users to contact their representatives.

This is the first time Aylo has come back to a market after restricting access to its sites in response to age verification laws.

“As of about 30 minutes ago, we're now live again in the UK, accessible to Apple users who have updated to the most recent version of the iOS,” Alex Kekesi, VP Brand and Community at Aylo, said in a 9:30 a.m. EST call on Tuesday.

Visitors to the sites who are using a Windows PC, Android device, or other non-iPhone or other mobile Apple devices such as iPads that use iOS in the UK will still not have access.

“We have been reaching out to the operating system providers to emphasize the need for a highly effective device based solution, that includes Google, that includes Microsoft and Apple,” Solomon Friedman, partner and vice president of compliance at ECP, said on the call. “And on behalf of ownership, we're obviously delighted to see that Apple has instituted UK wide, effective device based age assurance.”

In November 2025, Pornhub’s parent company Aylo sent letters to Apple, Google, and Microsoft urging them to support device-based age verification in their app stores and operating systems.

Pornhub Is Urging Tech Giants to Enact Device-Based Age Verification

The company sent letters to Apple, Google, and Microsoft pushing for an alternative way to keep minors from viewing porn, as US and UK laws have caused its traffic to plummet.

^{Jason Parham (WIRED)}

404 Media

2026-04-01 13:10:17

I Tried to Find the ‘Arousal Intelligence’ In An Animated, Augmented Reality Porn Star

Sometimes people—especially those in the field of public relations doing a pray-and-spray campaign, but also small-time developers, the occasional delusional vibe-coder, and local dipshits—deliver messages to my inbox like a cat dropping a dead mouse on my doorstep. For the most part, I resist the bait: often, bad press is still press to these people, or I’m just too busy to really look at the pitch or try the product.

This week, I’m coming back from a week of being entirely offline. I didn’t look at the news or my inboxes for seven straight days. I’m feeling properly healed, and also like I need to retraumatize myself back into the swing of things. Lucky me, on Monday morning, someone representing EnjoyMeNow emailed me about “a mobile website that places a photorealistic 3D character in your real room using augmented reality” using something called “Arousal Intelligence” and “real-time physics,” which streams “in a full engine from a global delivery network.” This press release, sent from “a globally focused media and entertainment holding company pioneering technology-driven innovation across digital platforms worldwide” called DCBG Group which represents EnjoyMeNow, was very thrilling to read as someone who appreciates the art of a good word salad. I dropped what I was doing (deleting hundreds of other emails) to try it out.

Once on the EnjoyMeNow.com mobile site, after agreeing that you’re over 18, you’re asked to choose a “Pleasurette™,” a gender neutral term for a series of 3D characters and a trademark filed two weeks ago. These include five women wearing sex toy store package lingerie, and one dude, Adrian.

“Every character—called a Pleasurette™—is a photorealistic digital human built from scratch with realistic skin shading, multi-pass rendered hair, and soft-body physics. No real performers are filmed, recorded, or motion-captured. The characters are created entirely in 3D software.” Presented without comment are the Pleasurettes™:

I choose Adrian first because I’m always curious how AR and VR porn copes with the fact that hovering pecs and an immobile penis are difficult to make sexy in this format, real or not. A lot of porn made for a VR or AR experience is shot from the penile point of view: It’s just easier to strap a 180 degree HD camera to a man’s face and tell him to hold still while a female performer is free to writhe around on top than vice-versa. Knowing this, and also knowing that the market for AR/VR porn caters heavily toward men (save for a few beacons of light, such as director Anna Lee, who a few years ago said of the proliferation of male-gaze VR porn: “You’re making the same stereotypical porn you made with a fucking camcorder. It’s the same MILF bending over in the kitchen to bake cookies”), I still went in hopeful. After all, they pitched me.

But it became clear almost immediately that Adrian is not playing for my team, so to speak, and getting the full EnjoyMeNow experience as intended requires equipment I don’t have. To get your chosen Pleasurette™ into your camera’s view, you have to hold your phone at an angle toward your crotch and stroke your penis. Helpfully, since I don’t have one of those, the app overlays a semi-transparent image of a penis at the bottom of the camera. It waits for you to put your hand in frame near the penis-guide to let the show begin. Moving my hand across the camera unlocks the start button. It’s not doing this to make sure you’re choked up on it before starting; It’s calibrating the position of the 3D model to your hand’s location and size, because that’s what controls its interactive aspects.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
Without getting too graphic in a blog that’s already pretty explicit so far, this is what I encountered: Adrian walks into view totally nude, leading with his 3D dick at a 90 degree angle, and says “look up, here I come.” Tearing my eyes away from this perfectly straight tree branch and pointing the phone camera up as commanded, with more than a little trepidation, I see the jiggliest pair of male titties I’ve ever seen on screen, nipples wobbling independently of the rest of him. “Stroke back and forth your big dick,” he says, grammatically confounding me on top of already freaking me out with a thousand yard stare. When I make a jerkoff motion in his general direction, he squats up and down like he’s teabagging me in Halo. Bizarrely, when I do this, his entire body shrinks, my hand now a monstrous size in comparison to his penis. No judgement, but he moans in a woman’s voice. “Come on my back soon,” he says, before a screen interrupts the session saying I need to pay $2.99 to unlock more features, such as making my Pleasurette™ orgasm. (For the record, I tried two payment methods to fork over this low low price, both rejected.) The experience is the same with the other characters, just in different skins: the female characters crawl around and squat over my ghost penis, and I use my imagination to jerk it off, which ends up looking like I’m fistbumping tiny 3D women in the vagina. Sometimes, I clip through their hollow bodies and can see straight up into their heads or down through their labia.

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1×

EnjoyMeNow’s PR rep claims that this interactivity is a world first. “Existing AR adult content is pre-rendered video or static models you look at,” they told me. “EnjoyMeNow is interactive, where the character responds to your hand in real-time, placed in your actual room through your phone camera. And it runs entirely in the mobile browser. No app, no download, no account. That combination doesn't exist anywhere else from our research over the past year of creating this.”

Companies like SexLikeReal and Naughty America have been doing AR and VR content for years, often featuring real porn performers. But this hand-tracking thing EnjoyMeNow is doing is different than that, they claim. And I’ll concede, yes, moving your hand up and down definitely makes the 3D model move around a little bit. Here's how one of the femme characters acts:

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1×

What really makes EnjoyMeNow stand apart from plenty of other AR porn products is this insistence that not employing real models or performers makes it better or smarter, somehow. On Monday, the DCBC Group’s website said of the choice to use CGI instead of people: “This was a founding decision, not a technical workaround. The adult entertainment industry has always relied on real people putting their bodies in front of a camera—and that comes with real consequences. Exploitation, coercion, content leaked without consent, performers pressured into work they're uncomfortable with, and careers that follow people for the rest of their lives whether they want them to or not. We chose to build a platform where none of that is possible. Every character on EnjoyMeNow is created entirely in software. No one is filmed. No one is exploited. No one's livelihood depends on what they're willing to do on camera. The experience is just as immersive—and no real person is harmed or compromised in the process.”

The idea that the adult industry—and “putting bodies in front of a camera”—is inherently exploitative is not only false, it’s a harmful thing to say, and it’s especially galling coming from a literal porn web toy. This entire statement is so infuriating it’s hard to know where to begin with it. These are talking points used by the most conservative, anti-porn lobbying groups and politicians on the planet to justify stripping us all of rights, here being floated by an app that makes weird, schlocky and unsatisfying 3D characters that the residents in Second Life’s least-attended sex clubs wouldn’t even find sexy.

But again, because I had the time and was feeling fresh, I asked DCBC Group to defend this statement with some data at least. “We're not making a judgment about the adult industry or its performers,” they said. “We built a product around CGI characters, that’s a format choice, not a moral position. Some people prefer content that doesn't involve real people. We built for them. We've now updated our press page to better reflect that; thank you Sam for that observation.” The page now says “EnjoyMeNow is built around computer-generated characters rather than real performers. This is a format choice—offering a new kind of private, interactive experience that doesn't exist in traditional adult content.” Good for them for changing it.

And since users are being asked to position their dongs in front of their phone cameras on a browser-based app, I took a look at the “privacy” section of the FAQ. “Privacy is architectural, not a policy bolt-on. No app is installed. No account is required,” DCBC wrote. “All camera and motion processing runs locally on the phone—no frames, no images, no data ever leave the device. There is no cloud processing, no recording, and no persistent data stored after the session ends. When you close the tab, the adult content is automatically purged from the browser.”

I asked DCBC’s rep if they could elaborate. Well, they could at least throw more words at it: “Regarding content encryption, every 3D asset is individually encrypted at the file level, stored encrypted, transmitted encrypted, and only decrypted at render time using per-session keys that never touch the device,” they said. “There are no downloadable model files. This is a custom content protection system built specifically to prevent our CGI assets from being extracted, redistributed or changed. The specifics are proprietary, but it goes well beyond transport-layer encryption. One core goal of this architecture is ensuring no one can upload their own content to the platform. This is a closed system by design.”

“Just needless words really,” 404 Media’s privacy and security reporter Joseph Cox said about this when I showed him what DCBC said. It could easily be cut down to “we don’t allow uploads.” Which is, to be clear, for the best.

I should say here that I don’t go into these sorts of reviews assuming that I am the target audience. I’m pitched regularly by porn sites and sex toy companies on products that aren’t my personal thing; I wrote a column for years about kinks and fetishes that are not many people’s thing at all, but I wanted to better understand them and what appeal they hold for the people who love them. Maybe there are people out there who simply cannot consume content with real people in it; if that’s you, please hit me up, I would really like to hear more about that.

Age Verification Laws Drag Us Back to the Dark Ages of the Internet

Invasive and ineffective age verification laws that require users show government-issued ID, like a driver's license or passport, are passing like wildfire across the U.S.

^{Emanuel Maiberg (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-01-28 14:28:19

Amid Backlash, Massive Porn Platform ManyVids Doubles Down on Bizarre, AI-Generated Posts

Faced with concerns about its leadership experiencing AI-induced delusions, backlash because its founder stating she now finds sex work “exploitative,” and confusion from its millions of creators and users, porn platform ManyVids is doubling down on the AI-generated messaging with posts about “believing in aliens.” In a post seemingly by the platform’s founder Bella French, she says the answer should be “a 3-hour long-form podcast conversation.”

This comes after the platform promised more clarity into how creators would be affected.

In the past few months, as 404 Media reported last week, ManyVids has increasingly turned to posting bizarre, clearly AI text and videos about imaginary conversations with aliens, French as an astronaut floating toward a black hole, and photos of hand-scrawled plans to convert the site to a tiered safe-for-work funnel, versus what makes it popular today: access to adult content from sex workers. French also recently changed her website to state she doesn’t believe the adult industry should exist, causing many online sex workers to question whether the site will remain a viable option for their income.

💡
Do you work on or for an adult content platform and have a tip? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at sam@404media.co.

When I asked ManyVids for clarity on French’s statements—specifically on how she plans to “transition one million people” out of sex work, and if any of this will affect the millions of creators and fans who use the platform—someone replied from the support staff: “We are not victims — and we are taking action now,” the statement said. I asked what “taking action” means, and they replied assuring me that all would become clear on January 24, when a post would be published on the ManyVids news feed “It will provide additional clarification and go into a bit more detail on this,” they said. ManyVids published several posts on Saturday. None of them include additional clarification, all of them seem to be AI-generated, and they introduce more questions instead of answers.

Aliens and Angel Numbers: Creators Worry Porn Platform ManyVids Is Falling Into ‘AI Psychosis’
“Ethical dilemmas about AI aside, the posts are completely disconnected with ManyVids as a site,” one ManyVids content creator told 404 Media.
404 MediaSamantha Cole

“MV is an 18+ pop-culture, e-commerce social platform — and part of the job-creation economy of the future,” one post on the 24th said. “Our diverse offering of NSFW & SFW creators is a strength. How did we get here? Why SFW matter? [sic] How can online sex workers be recognized by society with the same legitimacy and respect as any other form of labor? After 15 years of reflection — 3 years as a performer and 12 years as a CEO — I believe a 3-hour long-form podcast conversation is the best way to explain the why, the numbers, the logic, and the how behind this work. Today’s stigma, debanking, deplatforming, and prejudgment punish online SW without giving them a fair chance to be heard. Protection comes from building better systems and creating more options.”

The post ended with the hashtag “#MaybeLexFridman,” referring to the popular podcaster.

A second post that day features an AI-generated video of French as a fireman with laser eyes. “At ManyVids, we believe in a Human-Centered Economy (HCE) — where merit and meaning are preserved because they matter,” the post says. “The job-creation network of the future, for humans who want to monetize their passions.” It goes on to mention, but not explain, a fictional concept called “Universal Bonus Intelligence.”

The post concludes: “MV - Made by Humans & AI. For Humans.”

And in a third post that day, with a collage of photos and AI-generated versions of French in different occupations, including astronaut and firefighter: “At ManyVids, we choose slow truth over quick certainty. We aim to help open hearts and minds toward differences.”

That post ends with: “Bella French. Co-Founder & Still-Standing CEO #RespectOnlineSexWorkers #Innovation #Since2014”
Screenshot from ManyVids' news feed
In the two days since, ManyVids has posted several more times. In one titled “A Message from the Green Tara,” referencing a figure in Buddhism: “So yeah... dragons are real. 😜🐉🔥 #MaybeJoeRogan” In another about Lilith, a fictional character from religious folklore: “Not Heaven. Not Hell. A 3rd option: no old binaries: a new garden built by outcasts. Yeah... We Are Many. And we deserve better. ✨🔥 #MVMag13 #WeAreMany #MaybeJordanPeterson”

And in the platform’s most recent post: A huge thank you to everyone who has ever been part of the MV Team and the MV Community. 💖 You are FOREVER family. 💖 💖 Un gros merci du fond du cœur. 💖 From your favorite pop culture platform for adults that also 100% believes in aliens. 👽🖖🏾✨😉” This is a reference to concerns from the community about previous posts featuring imaginary conversations with aliens.

ManyVids did not respond to my requests for comment about these recent posts.

ManyVids: Monetize Your Passion — Content Creation Freedom — Explore Diversity — A Social E-Commerce One-Stop-Shop

Enjoy a judgment-free ecosystem where you can celebrate and monetize your passions! Join FREE today!

^{www.manyvids.com}

404 Media

2026-01-22 16:20:38

Aliens and Angel Numbers: Creators Worry Porn Platform ManyVids Is Falling Into ‘AI Psychosis’

In posts on ManyVids, the porn platform’s official account holds imaginary conversations with aliens, alongside AI-generated videos of UFOs, fractal images, “angel numbers,” and a video of its founder and CEO Bella French in a space suit shooting lasers from her eyes.

French launched the site in 2014 as a former cam model herself, and the platform has millions of members and tens of thousands of creators. Adult content creators use it to sell custom videos and subscriptions, and perform live on camera. French recently changed her personal website to state her new goal is to “transition one million people out of the adult industry and do everything we can to ensure no one new enters it.” The statement follows posts on X’s ManyVids account about new strategies to pivot the site toward safe-for-work, non-sexual content.

This sudden shift away from years of messaging about being a compatriot with sex workers, combined with bizarre AI-generated text and images about talking to aliens and numerology on social media, has made some creators worry for their livelihoods, and caused others to leave the site completely.

For years, the official ManyVids social media accounts made mostly normal posts that promoted the site and its creators. But in mid-2025, the posts from the ManyVids X account changed. Instead of promotions of top creators, announcements of contests, and tips for using the platform, the account shifted its focus to existential and metaphysical musings. Around August, it started posting cryptic quotes, phrases, and images, many seemingly generated by or about AI.

The account also started replying to engagement-farming posts from influencers, writing things like “Our purpose: to protect the feminine energy — so that balance may return,” and posting borderline-nonsensical bullet-point lists about “the boldness scale” and how ManyVids leadership is “all connected.”

“The impact strength of a positive leader ⚡ Effectiveness ⚡ Execution ⚡ Discipline ⚡ Accountability,” one post in August said. On August 20, @ManyVids posted an image on X of a flow chart alongside a screenshot of a ChatGPT conversation, seemingly illustrating how the platform would bring in users through a “safe-for-work” zone, then allow them to access NSFW content after verifying their identifications. “Our vision: Adult Industry 2.0 isn’t about more revenue. It’s about evolution,” the post said.

The replies to these posts show ManyVids creators expressing anger, concern, and bafflement. The account stopped posting on X in September. But on the ManyVids platform itself, which has a “news” feed that functions similarly to a microblogging platform but is just for official platform posts, the odd entries continue.

💡
Do you know anything else about what's happening at ManyVids, or do you have a tip about porn platforms and online sex work generally? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at sam@404media.co.

“Social API for the AI Age. Phase 1 — Pride Engine,” one post from January 16 says:

“The High Universal Income (HUI) Engine is the distribution hub of the new economy, built for a world where AI does the work humans never wanted to do. AI generates surplus wealth, but humans need surplus purpose. Human meaning becomes the rarest and most valuable resource on Earth. Instead of opaque taxes, AI companies fund a Social License through platforms like ManyVids, converting AI efficiency into merit-based bonuses for human contribution. For every dollar earned through passion, creation, care, or learning, HUI adds 10%. This is not charity. It is a Pride Engine. We shift the foundation of human value.”

The post ends with a six-second AI generated video that includes the phrase “the ultimate guide to rebuilding civilization.” Most posts in recent weeks are like this: clearly AI generated text alongside six-second AI generated clips showing angels, chakras, or spiritual phrases. “The Simulation of Integrity. If we don’t fully understand the ultimate nature of reality, what should guide how we live inside it?” one recent post says. “If the nature of the ‘game’ is unknown, then how you treat others — and yourself — becomes the most meaningful data point.”

And in a post right after the new year: “Hey everyone! Back-to-the-office Monday vibe. How were your holidays? Did you travel anywhere? I did... 🕳️Next time, I’ll bring sunglasses. I came back with a few new ideas and fresh thoughts ✨Let’s get to work. Let’s go, 2026! 🚀” Below the text: a video of French in a space suit, black hole in the background, shooting laser-lightning out of her eyes.

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Screengrab via ManyVids

A lot of people who rely on ManyVids for income have noticed this odd behavior and are disturbed by it.

“Ethical dilemmas about AI aside, the posts are completely disconnected with ManyVids as a site,” one ManyVids content creator told 404 Media, on the condition of anonymity. “Their customers and their creators are not served in any way by these. When faced with backlash, MV removed the ability to comment on posts. To anyone looking at them they appear to be ramblings and images generated by a person in active psychosis.”

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Screengrab via ManyVids

Almost every ManyVids creator 404 Media spoke to for this story brought up “AI psychosis” unprompted, when asked if they’d seen the ManyVids posts.

“I have seen them and I find them really insulting,” Sydney Screams said. “The way I perceive the posts is that Bella and the MV team doesn't respect their creators enough to spend time making their own content, instead taking the easy way out and using bizarre AI that doesn't even relate. Why do we need Bella shooting laser beams out of her eyes to make an announcement? It's infuriating because it's like she doesn't take us seriously, doesn't take her own platform seriously, and we're supposed to just be grateful for the crumbs she's giving us. We deserve better,” she said. “We deserve to be treated with respect, talked to like we're adults, and listened to like our voices matter. Instead we get AI slop and posts that promise big things without any sort of follow through.”

Harlan Paramore, a ManyVids creator who also helps other creators onboard and manage their selling sites, said he’s noticed “bizarre posts about AI, angel numbers, christopaganism, cyberpaganism.”

“I don't have anything against any of those beliefs, but they seem wildly out of place for an official site blog. They are also heavily loaded with AI-like language and structure, and decorated with AI images,” Paramore said. “I'm also a professional artist, and as both an artist and sex worker I'm frustrated and confused. Some of it kind of sounds like AI psychosis, too, which has me concerned for whoever is running that blog.”

“I'm not a mental health professional, but whatever Bella is going through doesn't seem normal. It doesn't seem healthy,” Screams said. “From where I'm sitting, if I were close to Bella, I'd be reaching out to her other friends and family members to stage an intervention and try to get her serious mental health care.”

All of this is coinciding with an apparent massive change in French’s ideology toward sex work. On her personal website, French says the goal of ManyVids is changing to “transition one million people out of the adult industry.” She calls sex work “exploitative.” Her bio quotes her as saying: “I had two choices: surrender to an exploitative industry or dismantle it. I chose to build its replacement... ManyVids was the result—the most efficient revenue-distribution engine for the AI-displaced workforce. Guided by first principles and core value thinking, Bella is leading MV’s next evolution: a Fintech/Social-Impact hybrid that turns digital presence into economic creation. By utilizing AI-integrated workflows and layered access, ManyVids is migrating creators from adult content into a diversified creative economy,” her bio says. “Our goal is to transition one million people out of the adult industry and do everything we can to ensure no one new enters it. We are working to transform an industry we don’t believe should exist—but we recognize that simple elimination creates deeper shadows. The solution is elevation through meaningful alternatives.”

This is a recent addition to her website. According to archived versions of the site, the section about transitioning people out of the sex industry wasn’t there in November 2025.

“ManyVids is now becoming a regulated e-social ecosystem — a digital space that sensitizes, elevates, and restricts adult content through layered brackets of access,” French’s bio says now. “This ensures that sacred sexual expression is never free, never exploited, and never divorced from its core human depth.” The “layered brackets” seem to be a reference to the ChatGPT screenshots from August 20.

This is an extreme departure in tone from what French has said was her mission with ManyVids in the past. In 2019, I met French for an on-background hotel room meeting during the porn industry’s biggest award show and conference, AVN, where she told me she created ManyVids out of a passion to create a platform where other sex workers—having been an adult content creator herself—would be treated fairly and would be listened to by the platform’s owners. French is a former cam model herself, and has always been open publicly about wanting to create better platforms for other sex workers.

“Their customers and their creators are not served in any way by these."

“We try to offer sex workers the tools to be more successful as independent entrepreneurs without being judged,” French told the Daily Beast in 2019. “What was really important for me was to educate the world and make them realize that porn stars are not stupid.”

Shortly after she and I met in 2019, French agreed to a written interview as part of a VICE story about authenticity in cam work. In that email, she called camming the “biggest gift” she’d ever received. “Being a camgirl not only has a huge influence on my approach to taking business decisions but has changed the way I view people and life in general,” French wrote at the time. “Every single decision we take at ManyVids must answer 1 simple question, ‘Will this help the content creators, our MV Stars?’ That’s it,” French wrote in 2019. “If the answer is yes then we proceed, regardless if there is any financial advantage or potential for profit, that is irrelevant.”

Platforms have long profited off of sex workers and pornography to establish popularity and rake in revenue before eventually doing a heel-turn on the creators who made them successful. We’ve seen it happen with mainstream social media platforms like Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter, and also on sites ostensibly made for sex workers, like OnlyFans, which nearly changed its policies to ban explicit material after making billions of dollars off their content.

I asked ManyVids and French if the platform is changing to reflect these social media posts and her statements on her bio, who is making the AI-generated posts mentioned above, how French plans to “transition one million people” out of sex work, and if any of this will affect creators and fans who use ManyVids. The ManyVids support team did not answer these questions specifically, but sent the following response (emphasis theirs):

"Hello, thanks for reaching out. Respect for Online Sex Workers. Sex work is real work. No more living in the shadows, no more being misunderstood.
No more being afraid, shadowbanned, or persecuted by systems and institutions. Not on our watch. We are not victims — and we are taking action now.This generation of online sex workers is about to change the game forever —and transform the oldest profession in the world in the right direction, for good. Respect the creators. Respect the work. Respect what you watch. We stand for safety, dignity, and opportunity for all creators."
Screenshot of the emailed response from ManyVids support
I asked ManyVids to explain in specific terms what "we are taking action now" means. They replied: "A post will be published to our ManyVids News feed this Saturday, January 24th. It will provide additional clarification and go into a bit more detail on this," with a link to the feed.

“It concerns me that access to my earnings, and more importantly my personal information, is in the hands of someone seemingly out of touch with reality.”

In the meantime, creators have been confused and worried for weeks. Nothing has changed about the way the site operates publicly or creators’ payouts as of writing, but this is a series of events that many adult content creators are concerned represents a potential threat to their livelihood.

“If something were to happen to MV (or to my account there) due to what can only be described as AI psychosis, I would lose upwards of 14k per year—a not insignificant amount of income,” another adult creator on ManyVids told 404 Media. “It concerns me that access to my earnings, and more importantly my personal information, is in the hands of someone seemingly out of touch with reality.”

ManyVids takes a larger-than-most cut from creators' profits, depending on the type of content: For videos and contest earnings (which are similar to tips), the platform takes 40 percent. On tips and custom video sales, it takes 20 percent, which is more in line with other adult platforms. This has been a source of complaint from creators for a long time, combined with unpredictable algorithms that creators say change how they’re discovered on the platform and what content performs best, impacting their earnings. Users have expressed dissatisfaction with these aspects of the platform, and how French runs it, for years. But the recent turn to AI and French’s statements about the industry are making some wonder if it’s time to leave.

“I will still be using ManyVids for NSFW content for as long as they allow it,” adult content creator August told 404 Media. “But part of me thinks that they will try to do what OnlyFans did years ago and try to ban NSFW content which would be an absolute disaster for sex workers whose income depends on platforms like ManyVids.”

Luna Sapphire, a creator who has been using the platform since 2015, said she finds French’s statements on her website “harmful and insulting” to those who’ve helped popularize the site from the start. “Most of us are not looking for a path out of the adult industry; we simply want to do our jobs with as little interference and censorship as possible,” Sapphire said. “Bella used to be very pro-sex worker and it is disappointing to see her change her tune.”

Several adult platforms have embraced, or at least allowed, AI-generated content and “models” on their sites alongside human creators in the last few years. On OnlyFans, AI-generated is allowed, but must comply with the site’s terms of service and and “must be clearly and conspicuously captioned as AI Generated Content with a signifier such as #ai, or #AIGenerated,” Onlyfans says in its terms. Fansly, another adult platform for independent creators, forbids “photorealistic AI-generated content” but allows non-photorealistic “virtual entities” (like V-tubers) if they’re registered using the uploader’s real legal information for verification purposes. JustForFans requires that “consent, identity, and proof of age must be established if the AI images are based on a real person's likeness,” and allows deepfakes if consent has been established. “For example, you can use your own face to create images of yourself or a model who has granted consent to use their face,” the platform’s terms say. IWantClips, another site for selling custom content, also requires users making AI-generated models to verify their identities, but explicitly doesn’t allow deepfakes.

In 2024, IWantClips awarded an AI-generated model $1,000 as the winner of a Valentine’s Day-themed contest. “Adora” competed in the contest alongside human sex workers. On most of these sites, engagement and attention are currency, and on ManyVids, AI generated models sell content alongside humans. The platform prohibits “AI-generated or deepfake content that misrepresents real individuals without consent,” as part of its terms that forbid “content that violates any third party's intellectual property rights or another individual's privacy.”

“The AI/intense spirituality path has been so strange to witness, and I can’t imagine what it’s leaving the fans to think,” Elizabeth Fields, an adult content creator who’s used ManyVids for six years, told 404 Media. “I don’t understand what they are trying to do by taking this direction, nor do I understand how it’s fair of a sexwork built site to assume all of us don’t want to do NSFW content–and to try and funnel us into this box of ‘not enjoying the work we do. To an extent it feels degrading honestly—just because Bella’s experience in sex work was survival based and to make ends meet—a lot of us thoroughly enjoy our jobs, the path we took, and want to continue doing this.”

Many sex workers are disabled, neurodivergent, mentally ill, chronically ill, or “all of the above,” Fields noted, and rely on online sex work to pay the bills. “It feels absolutely unfair to feel like we could be pushed off of a site that became popular off OUR NSFW content—because they want to make it more SFW, and implement all these new AI features that will quite frankly just turn clients off.”

Despite all of this, Fields said she won’t be leaving the site. “To the point that as much as I'm extremely disappointed with many of the recent changes occurring, I won’t be deleting my account as to not lose that income and disappoint my ManyVids fans.”

Others are done. Sydney Screams said she’s no longer uploading to ManyVids and made the decision to slowly start removing content from her stores there. “Platforms that allow for online sex work should be working FOR us, not against us. Sex workers use platforms like MV to earn our own living, to enable ourselves to have better lives, to keep ourselves housed and fed, to pay for medical bills, etc. Many of us choose this life and choose to make this our career, though there are far too many who are survival sex workers,” Screams said. “We aren't looking for a pathway out of the adult industry, especially on a platform that is a porn platform!!! Unless MV is going to start funding the educations & trainings of those trying to leave the industry for work elsewhere, I do not see how a porn platform is going to create a path out of the industry.”

Emanuel Maiberg contributed reporting to this story.

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404 Media

2025-11-20 15:45:13

OnlyFans Will Start Checking Criminal Records. Creators Say That's a Terrible Idea

OnlyFans will start running background checks on people signing up as content creators, the platform’s CEO recently announced.

As reported by adult industry news outlet XBIZ, OnlyFans CEO Keily Blair announced the partnership in a LinkedIn post. Blair doesn’t say in the post when the checks will be implemented, whether all types of criminal convictions will bar creators from signing up, if existing creators will be checked as well, or what countries’ criminal records will be checked.

OnlyFans did not respond to 404 Media's request for comment.

“I am very proud to add our partnership with Checkr Trust to our onboarding process in the US,” Blair wrote. “Checkr, Inc. helps OnlyFans to prevent people who have a criminal conviction which may impact on our community's safety from signing up as a Creator on OnlyFans. It’s collaborations like this that make the real difference behind the scenes and keep OnlyFans a space where creators and fans feel secure and empowered.”

Many OnlyFans creators turned to the platform, and to online sex work more generally, when they’re not able to obtain employment at traditional workplaces. Some sex workers doing in-person work turned to online sex work as a way to make ends meet—especially after the passage of the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act in 2018 made it much more difficult to screen clients for escorting. And in-person sex work is still criminalized in the U.S. and many other countries.

“Criminal background checks will not stop potential predators from using the platform (OF), it will only harm individuals who are already at higher risk. Sex work has always had a low barrier to entry, making it the most accessible career for people from all walks of life,” performer GoAskAlex, who’s on OnlyFans and other platforms, told me in an email. “Removing creators with criminal/arrest records will only push more vulnerable people (overwhelmingly, women) to street based/survival sex work. Adding more barriers to what is arguably the safest form of sex work (online sex work) will push sex industry workers to less and less safe options.”

Jessica Starling, who also creates adult content on OnlyFans, told me in a call that their first thought was that if someone using OnlyFans has a prostitution charge, they might not be able to use the platform. “If they're trying to transition to online work, they won’t be able to do that anymore,” they said. “And the second thing I thought was that it's just invasive and overreaching... And then I looked up the company, and I'm like, ‘Oh, wow, this is really bad.’”

Checkr is reportedly used by Uber, Instacart, Shipt, Postmates, and Lyft, and lists many more companies like Dominos and Doordash on its site as clients. The company has been sued hundreds of times for violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act or other consumer credit complaints. The Fair Credit Reporting Act says that companies providing information to consumer reporting agencies are legally obligated to investigate disputed information. And a lot of people dispute the information Checkr and Inflection provide on them, claiming mixed-up names, acquittals, and decades-old misdemeanors or traffic tickets prevented them from accessing platforms that use background checking services.

Checkr regularly acquires other background checking and age verification companies, and acquired a background check company called Inflection in 2022. At the time, I found more than a dozen lawsuits against Inflection alone in a three year span, many of them from people who found out about the allegedly inaccurate reports Inflection kept about them after being banned from Airbnb after the company claimed they failed checks.

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“Sex workers face discrimination when leaving the sex trade, especially those who have been face-out and are identifiable in the online world. Facial recognition technology has advanced to a point where just about anyone can ascertain your identity from a single picture,” Alex said. “Leaving the online sex trade is not as easy as it once was, and anything you've done online will follow you for a lifetime. Creators who are forced to leave the platform will find that safe and stable alternatives are far and few between.”

Last month, Pornhub announced that it would start performing background checks on existing content partners—which primarily include studios—next year. "To further protect our creators and users, all new applicants must now complete a criminal background check during onboarding," the platform announced in a newsletter to partners, as reported by AVN.

Alex said she believes background checks in the porn industry could be beneficial, under very specific circumstances. “I do not think that someone with egregious history of sexual violence should be allowed to work in the sex trade in any capacity—similarly, a person convicted of hurting children should be not able to work with children—so if the criminal record checks were searching specifically for sex based offences I could see the benefit, but that doesn't appear to be the case (to my knowledge). What's to stop OnlyFans from deactivating someone's account due to a shoplifting offense?” she said. “I'd like to know more about what they're searching for with these background checks.”

Even with third-party companies like Checkr doing the work, as is the case with third-party age verification that’s swept the U.S. and targeted the porn industry, increased data means increased risk of it being leaked or hacked. Last year, a background check company called National Public Data claimed it was breached by hackers who got the confidential data of 2.9 billion people. The unencrypted data was then sold on the dark web.

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“It’s dangerous for anyone, but it's especially dangerous for us [adult creators] because we're more vulnerable anyway. Especially when you're online, you're hypervisible,” Starling said. “It doesn't protect anyone except OnlyFans themselves, the company.”

OnlyFans became the household name in independent porn because of the work of its adult content creators. Starling mentioned that because the platform has dominated the market, it’s difficult to just go to another platform if creators don’t want to be subjected to background checks. “We're put in a position where we have very limited power," they said. "So when a platform decides to do something like this, we’re kind of screwed, right?”

Earlier this year, OnlyFans owner Fenix International Ltd reportedly entered talks to sell the company to an investor group at a valuation of around $8 billion.

Pornhub Is Now Blocked In Almost All of the U.S. South

As of today, three more states join the list of 17 that can't access Pornhub because of age verification laws.

^{Samantha Cole (404 Media)}