Really? Do people really think OF "performers" really enjoy interaction with random dudes fapping in front of their screen.

Shouldn't there be a level of candidness at which it cannot be considered deception? I mean we accept casinos/gambling and religions in our societies for example.

Fraud is lying for financial gain.

If the site is saying ‘chat with X for $5/min’, and you never have any interaction with X at all for your $5/min, that seems like a pretty clear cut case doesn’t it?

"Give god the first portion of your income. Don't spend it and come sunday say i'll just give god a little of what's left. Give god the first portion of your income!"

Yeah, ok.

Okay, I've been in and around both sides of religions, and I do believe this is the first attempt at saying tithing is an act of fraud. I don't necessarily disagree. Just noting that it's the first time. I'd assume the down votes were expected with this one.

Yes, expected. The explicit order is to give "god" the money. This confers a benefit to the tither, per spec (the spec is kinda old.)

“But why does god need money?”

- soon to be murdered guy.

I have several friends who are "creators" who answer their own messages. I had an ex who warned me that she wouldn't mind if I watched porn but she wouldn't want me to use onlyfans because the platform encourages 1:1 communication.

I wouldn't expect, like, Mia Khalifa (I'm out of the game, who's current?) to answer her own messages but there does seem to be an expectation that smaller creators are actually behind the accounts.

The fact they answer themselves or with help from someone is one thing. The fact they are sincere in their messages in another one.

I know there are also some people who pretend they are falling in love with the prostitutes they pay to have sex but the terms are clear both in physical and online prostitution. It is all a business about pretending and consumers should expect that.

Even if it is 1:1 communication, it's not like the two of you were likely to meet. The thing that I've always seen as the one to get upset about is if the person is local thirst trap type of someone that is much less famous and more of a possibility of real life interactions.

People being easily duped is not an argument for something not being a scam. In fact, protecting easily duped people from scammers is the entire reason for having laws against scams.

It's not, not anymore than it already was.

I guess there is some truth to the adage that a male body can't push blood both to the brain and to the penis at the same time - it's either one, or the other. I mean, if you step back and take a cold look at the content produced by popular OF performers, it's pretty apparent those are business operations. There are other people involved. Someone does the camera work. Location work. Promotion. And yes, fan management too.

Same applies to YouTube personas, too. Brands, not people. Talking to fans is a job that can be outsourced. AI doesn't introduce anything new; AI features on the platform are competing with creators' brand management agencies, which themselves likely already use ChatGPT for this anyway, because why wouldn't they? ChatGPT does better job at this stuff and is cheaper than human labor - but again, the AI angle isn't important here - that human labor was just a generative model in a protein substrate anyway.

>"It's not, not anymore than it already was."

Maybe it already was fraud. I expect to see class-action lawsuits on the way soon.

It wasn't. It perhaps should've been, but instead, it was just "legitimate marketing practice".

This is another facet of a larger phenomenon, that I just commented on in another thread[0] - there's a lot of harmful activity that's considered legitimate, thus invisible to our legal and cultural immune systems, yet no less harmful than the slightly less legitimate scams.

--

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42401894

Your linked post seems to be a polemic, not a legal analysis. Many advertisements are subject to successful (expensive) class-action lawsuits based on some fraud or truth-in-marketing claim. Also, this isn’t an advertisement, it’s a communication which takes place under an implied contract.

If I take something from you and am never caught was it not theft?

First, let me say that you often post here on HN, and you are one of my favourites. You really have an ability to view the issue from multiple angles and provide thoughtful replies.

After reading your post, I had a thought: Making this story about OnlyFans is the click bait element. Seriously, replay the story in your head where it says that top 1/2/3/4/5% of YouTubers or Instagrammers or TikTokkers are using LLMs to answer comments and DMs. Suddenly, the story is much less enticing. It probably would not even make HN front page. Most readers here would look at such an article, shrug their shoulders, and say: "Yeah, seems right. I would do the same.". However, as soon as you add sex work into the mix, it gets way more spicy and elicits more emotional responses.

The difference is that on OF the direct contact is part of the sales pitch (perhaps the only part that actually provides "value" since there is no shortage of free porn, including OF leaks) whereas on other platforms it is not (and you are not directly purchasing anything at all but watching ads instead). Onlyfans isn't clickbait here because it is genuinely more scummy than doing this in the other places you mentioned.

That said, I don't agree that using AI chatbots to deceive fans is OK anywhere else either. And no, I would definitely not ever do it myself.