TikTok accused of promoting sex industry to girls

A new report suggests that TikTok is helping to promote and normalise the sex industry by allowing so-called "sexfluencers" to post videos that market pornographic content hosted on external platforms such as OnlyFans. Researchers examined non-explicit content uploaded to TikTok over a year by popular female OnlyFans performers and found that these women frequently embedded coded references to pornography within everyday "girly lifestyle content," such as videos of them shopping, baking, playing with pets, or providing skincare tips.

Although TikTok explicitly forbids sexual solicitation and direct links to OnlyFans, the study notes that performers bypass these rules by using emojis, euphemisms, and suggestive gestures to signal that adult content is available elsewhere. While the platform prohibits sexual material, it continues to distribute "safe-for-work" content created by prominent OnlyFans figures. The report details how hints about adult material are concealed within popular "get ready with me" videos, where performers may use terms like "corn" instead of "porn" or pair a corn emoji with a star emoji to avoid automated content blocks.

This study, titled the "TikTok to OnlyFans pipeline," was conducted by researchers at the UK-based Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation (Cease) and Australia’s Collective Shout. The team spent months reviewing posts from key "sexfluencers" and tracking the recommendations provided by TikTok’s algorithm. Viral posts from OnlyFans performers often brag to their TikTok followers about the wealth generated from selling sexual content. According to the report, "One of the most pervasive messages across these posts is that selling sexual services on OnlyFans gives you a fabulous life – a life filled with freedom, fun, friendship and lots of money."

These claims are often supported by visuals of luxury cars, private jets, cash, and mansions, accompanied by captions like "how it feels knowing I own all of this at 23 thanks to 250,000 men." In some instances, performers frame OnlyFans as a rags-to-riches solution to poverty, marketing the creation of an account as a way of "rescuing women and girls from bleak, underprivileged lives, gifting them with the nice, luxury items that they – and their struggling families – have always deserved."

While OnlyFans data shows that the top 5,000 creators have earned over $1m each since the site’s 2016 launch, the report estimates that the average earnings for the platform’s 5 million registered performers are closer to $1,000 annually. Melinda Tankard Reist of Collective Shout described TikTok as "an industrial-scale digital pimp funnelling girls into the sex industry." She added: "It is our view that young women and girls deserve to be protected from a predatory industry grooming them to be producers of explicit content."

Tankard Reist noted that the research was prompted by concerns regarding the massive teenage following of OnlyFans stars such as Sophie Rain and Ari Kytsya on TikTok. Rain gained notoriety for content filmed at the "Bop House," a luxury pornography production facility in Miami. Recruitment for the Bop House often takes place on TikTok, where aspiring members post suggestive dances tagged with recruitment references. Because TikTok has a high concentration of young users, it has become a vital starting point for many careers in the sex industry.

Many OnlyFans stars use their TikTok presence to combine lifestyle content with brand promotions, advertising everything from pet food and burgers to condoms and sex toys. Last year, the global cosmetics brand L’Oréal named Kytsya—who refers to herself as a "mattress actress"—as a brand ambassador for Urban Decay, a makeup line popular with teenagers. In these videos, which have garnered millions of views, she specifically discusses makeup that performs well on mattresses.

The report’s authors are now calling for international bans on showing pornography to under-18s to be extended to include content that promotes or relates to the sex industry. A TikTok spokesperson stated: "TikTok strictly prohibits the sharing or showing of sexual content and we us"