On November 7, 2026, The Guardian reported on a new study arguing that TikTok works as a marketing funnel for OnlyFans. The study is titled The TikTok to OnlyFans Pipeline: How TikTok is promoting, normalising and glamourising the sex industry. It is a 26-page report jointly published by two campaign groups: CEASE UK (the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation) and Collective Shout in Australia. Its authors are Collective Shout movement director Melinda Tankard Reist and CEASE UK strategy director Dr Elly Hanson. Collective Shout says the authors spent more than a year on the platform. The report formally launches at a Zoom webinar on Monday, November 9 (8pm AEDT), hosted by Culture Reframed CEO Gail Dines.

Why It Matters

**The fight over creator platforms is moving from what gets posted to how it gets marketed.** Age verification has already gated explicit content in the UK, Australia and about half of US states. This report goes further and argues that *promotion* of adult platforms on general-audience social media should also be restricted for minors. That would directly affect how OnlyFans, Fansly and similar creators find customers, since much of their marketing runs through safe-for-work posts on TikTok, Instagram, X and Reddit. It also arrives as UK platforms are already over-removing content under the new Crime and Policing Act offences ([our coverage](/stories/uk-crime-policing-act-royal-assent)) and the EU is drafting a Kids Act ([our coverage](/stories/eu-kids-act-under15-chatbot-ban)), so regulators are paying attention. For TikTok, the risk is regulatory: Ofcom's children's codes and Australia's eSafety regime both ask platforms to assess how their recommender systems serve young users. For creators and agencies, the practical risk is a new round of moderation targeting coded references and link-in-bio funnels. If regulators act on the report, that moderation will probably be automated and blunt. Watch the November 9 launch and whether eSafety or Ofcom respond.

What the report says. TikTok bans mentioning OnlyFans or linking to it from profiles, and it prohibits sexual solicitation. The researchers say popular OnlyFans performers work around those rules with coded, safe-for-work "girly lifestyle content": shopping hauls, baking, pets, skincare and "get ready with me" (GRWM) videos. They use euphemisms, emojis such as corn (for "porn") and suggestive gestures to point viewers to paid content elsewhere. The researchers also followed TikTok's recommendation algorithm from these accounts. They say a dominant message across the posts is that selling sexual content brings freedom, friends and money, illustrated with cash, cars and private jets. They contrast that with OnlyFans' own figures: according to the report, the top 5,000 creators have each made more than $1 million since 2016, while estimated average earnings across roughly 5 million registered performers are about $1,000 a year.

The ask. The authors want age restrictions to cover more than explicit content. Many countries already ban showing pornography to under-18s, and the report calls for that ban to extend to posts that promote or relate to the sex industry. Tankard Reist called TikTok "an industrial-scale digital pimp funnelling girls into the sex industry." A TikTok spokesperson told The Guardian the platform "strictly prohibits the sharing or showing of sexual content" and that its systems are designed to keep age-inappropriate content from teens. An OnlyFans spokesperson said the platform is for people aged 18 and over and has "strict onboarding processes to prevent minors accessing the platform."

Consider the source. Both groups campaign against the sex industry as a whole. They are not neutral researchers, and the report has not been peer reviewed. Collective Shout's earlier campaign aimed at payment processors came before Steam and itch.io pulled hundreds of adult games in 2025 (our coverage). That campaign showed the group can turn a report into pressure on a platform's business partners. Its central observation, that creators use mainstream social apps to drive paid adult subscriptions, is a well-known feature of the creator economy, not a hidden one.

Sources

Update — 2026-11-08

Initial entry — story first created.