Turns out scammers are using that leaked content to hack government websites, and OnlyFans creators might be part of the solution. 

Here is a sentence you may not have expected to read today: OnlyFans creators are accidentally helping cybersecurity teams identify compromised government websites. Not intentionally, but as a byproduct of fighting the endless, exhausting battle against people stealing and redistributing their content without permission. 

The mechanics of how this happened are genuinely bizarre, nd they say something interesting about both the scale of the adult creator economy and the perpetual chaos of the internet. 

Start with the piracy problem, which predates OnlyFans and will likely outlast it. Adult content creator Laura Lux has been publishing content online for nearly two decades, on her own subscription site, a Patreon channel, and now OnlyFans. And for those two decades, people have been stealing it. “We do lose a lot of money just because the content is literally a Google search away a lot of the time,” she said. The solution most serious creators have adopted is aggressive use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This allows creators to file takedown requests, get stolen content removed from search results, and repeat the process over and over and over. “If you are not running a DMCA service, then you might as well probably not even be bothering doing the job, because it will be everywhere,” Lux said.

So creators and the companies that represent them send millions of DMCA takedown requests targeting every URL where their stolen content appears. 

Meanwhile, the scammers have been exploiting a specific vulnerability in how Google’s search algorithm works. Government and university websites (anything with .gov or .edu domains) rank highly in search results because those extensions carry institutional authority. If you can inject malicious content into a compromised government website, that content will show up near the top of search results for whatever keyword you’ve targeted. The scammers’ targets of choice have increasingly been the names of popular adult content creators, because people searching for “leaked” content are, as one cybersecurity expert put it, “primed to click recklessly”. Click the promising leaked OnlyFans video from a .gov domain and you end up on a page full of malware, online dating scams, and suspicious advertising schemes, all pumping money into the pockets of these fraudsters. 

The result, according to new research from a cybersecurity company UpGuard, is htat more than 2,000 domains belonging to governments and educational institutions across more than 80 countries have received copyright takedown requests linked to adult content creators over the past fifteen years. There have been 384,286 total takedown requests covering more than 631,000 URLS, and of those, Google has removed around 130,000. That means that the other 400,000 are still up and running. 

OnlyFans creators filing DMCA requests to protect their stolen content are inadvertently flagging compromised government infrastructure to Google, essentially doing the work of cybersecurity teams who may not know their websites have been hijacked. “The OnlyFans models are not setting out to help government websites,” said Greg Pollock, director of research at UpGuard, “but in order for them to police their copyright ownership, they wind up sending a lot of notices to Google about those sites.”

Yet the DMCA is simultaneously the best tool OnlyFans creators have to combat this kind of leaked content, while also being the tool that is being weaponized against them. Top OnlyFans creators have discovered that unverified filers are impersonating them to file fraudulent DMCA claims, some even using the creators’ own names to file takedowns against publishers who legitimately feature them. “My agent brought these fake reports to my attention — I didn’t even know this could happen,” said Kayla, a top 1% OnlyFans creator. “Other creators who don’t have agency representation lose traffic to their pages and have no idea why it’s happening or what to do.” Google processes takedown notices from unverified filers at scale, requires no identity verification, and has built no meaningful system to flag abuse because at the end of the day, it doesn’t really impact them. But the creators? They feel the consequences in both directions: their content gets stolen, and then the system designed to protect them gets turned into a weapon against them.  

Dan Purcell, CEO of creator content protection firm Ceartas, points out that sending DMCA requests to compromised government websites is legally questionable, as those sites aren’t intentionally hosting or advertising the content, so it’s likely not a genuine copyright violation in any meaningful sense. His company contacts the website’s security team directly when it encounters these situations instead of filing takedown requests. “Just because it smells funny and looks funny doesn’t mean that you just execute the most aggressive law possible to remove the content,” he said.

Yet for most creators, the DMCA is the only tool available to fight the very real piracy problem they deal with daily. For now, these OnlyFans creators will continue to file millions of takedown requests to protect their work, accidentally doing more for government cybersecurity than they’d ever imagine. If only the system would do something for them in return.

While some creators have credited OnlyFans with saving their lives, it was just hyperbole. But when Mikomi Hokina says it, she means it literally. 

Hokina, a Belgian cosplay creator with over two million Instagram followers, was in her twenties when a fellow creator noticed something unusual during a collaborative shoot. They were filming content together when her co-star touched something that didn’t feel right. A small, rocky lump in her breast. The kind of thing that could be easy to dismiss, but her co-star didn’t. She urged Hokina to get it checked. 

And when she did, she received a diagnosis of breast cancer. It turns out that Hokina carries the BRCA1 gene, a genetic mutation that significantly increases the likelihood of developing aggressive breast cancer. She’d known about the gene for a while, as her mother died of cancer and Hokina decided to have genetic testing done. But even though she knew the risk, getting that kind of diagnosis in her twenties, two hours before a flight to Thailand where she was scheduled to shoot more content, was a shock. 

“Two hours before my flight, I got the phone call that my test results were positive for cancer,” she recalled.

She did go to Thailand anyway. The doctors told her two weeks wasn’t going to kill her. So she worked, came home, and then broke the news to her loved ones. 

Hokina began chemotherapy quickly and found herself in deep grief over her hair. It may seem silly to some people, but for many women, their hair is central to their identity. It was for Hokina, especially since it was also part of her livelihood. “I was crying a lot, especially when I had to make that extra step of cutting my hair,” she said. “You lose so much and it was so patchy, so I decided to shave it short.” By Easter that year she was fully bald. She made a nest of the hair she’d lost, put eggs in it, and posted it as a holiday greeting. Dark humor as a survival strategy. 

“When I was sick, I used a lot of dark humor to cope with my illness in general,” she said.

Cosplay, unexpectedly, became part of how she rebuilt. Hokina had always been a cosplayer. She loved inhabiting fictional characters with both strengths and visible weaknesses, and the craft of costume construction is something she takes so seriously she wants to supply costumes for films one day. But during chemo, the hair loss opened a door she hadn’t previously considered: she could create content as Saitama, the bald protagonist from One-Punch Man, without a bald cap creating problems with her thick hair. 

The character she’d never been able to cosplay became, in the middle of her worst year, one of her most resonant. A bald hero with absurd strength, both physical and emotional. The dark humor of it lands differently when you understand the content. 

Hokina is 30 now. The cancer is, in her own words, “so far behind her.” She has built a six-figure career on OnlyFans, where she maintains a fan base that cosplay and content creation drew in. “I love it,” she said. “I keep my fans happy, and I’ve transformed my hobby into my job.” Cosplay is her passion, and OnlyFans is the platform (and income) that lets her do it. 

OnlyFans is also the reason Hokina is able to share her story today, all because a fellow creator on a shoot noticed something and encouraged her to check it out.

You might catch more than a few expecting influencers showing off their pregnancy belly or flaunting their extravagant baby showers & gender reveals, but what happens when they don’t even know they’re pregnant?

Meet the stunning Alex Paige Moore, the platinum blonde Aussie OnlyFans star who had a fascinating – if abrupt – introduction to motherhood. 

“I actually had a six-pack just before I found out that I was pregnant,” Alex says. “I have polycystic ovaries, so I wasn’t getting regular periods anyway, I’d get maybe one or two a year. So, not having a period wasn’t unusual.”

Alex’s social calendar and fitness routine inadvertently enabled her to explain away pregnancy’s more conspicuous signs.

“As for morning sickness, I had a bit of heartburn, but again, it was after I’d taken pre-workout, so I was like, ‘It’s probably just the pre-workout.’ I was really sick one day after I drank, basically vomiting all day. But I was like, ‘I had a big night. I didn’t finish till 3:00 a.m. So, I’m not going to be like, ‘am I pregnant?’ I think I’m just hungover.’”

Initially believing her exhaustion and lapses in consciousness to be the result of an eating disorder, Alex eventually went to the doctor at the behest of her mother. After all, it could be something as simple as a nutrition deficiency, as Alex had thought.

“I went to the doctors and did the blood test and never went back for the results,” Alex explained. “And it was a month later. Mum was like, ‘Did you go back and get the results because you’re not feeling any better?’ And I’m like, ‘No.’ So, she’s like, ‘You need to call up and get the result.’ So, I went in and then they’re like, ‘Yeah, everything’s normal. It’s probably just the fact that you’re pregnant.’ I was like, ‘What? I’m pregnant?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah didn’t you know?’ I was like, ‘What the hell?’”

At only 21, Alex knew her environment was less than ideal for becoming a mother. She lived at home, trapped in a toxic relationship with her then-boyfriend. It seemed parenthood would condemn this freewheeling young adult to a life of sacrifice and structure.

“When I immediately found out I was pregnant, I assumed, ‘Okay, I must be 4 weeks pregnant.’ Did I have a thought of ‘I don’t know if this is what I want right now?’ 100 percent. I was thinking that,” Alex said. “But then me and my partner were talking about it and before we even found out how far along we were, I felt like the logical thing to do was terminate, even though we were really sad about it.”

What shocked the couple was just how far along Alex was. She had been pregnant for five months. 

“She was posterior, her spine was against my spine,” Alex explains. “I also had an anterior placenta, so a lot of the movement and everything was muffled. It was insane because it was only a week or two after I found out that I started noticing a bump.”

This discovery hamstringed Alex’s ability to terminate her pregnancy and she began to spiral into uncertainty. Like most 21-year-olds, Alex was no stranger to alcohol consumption and drank regularly before she knew she was pregnant. She could only hope that her baby, now undoubtedly on the way, was healthy.

“I was shitting myself the whole pregnancy. I was like, if I’ve done something, if she’s not healthy… I was already freaking out at the fact I’m going to be a mum, let alone having a child that might need even more care. But she came out perfect with five fingers on each hand and ten toes, and I was like, ‘Okay, we’re all good.’”

With her fears about giving birth to an unhealthy child now assuaged, the true challenge began: reckoning with her failing relationship with her child’s father. They eventually decided to end things.

“One of the first things I did after the breakup was get a boob job. I was like, ‘I’m spending it on tits.’  I figured these weren’t going to make money as little saggy things, it was an investment.”

Alex, now a single parent, worked at a dentist’s office as a nurse. Her salary was far from adequate for her and her new baby’s needs, but her mother routinely stepped up to help. 

“I was living at home with my mum, so I didn’t have to pay rent. She was very nice about that. No bills. They provided food. Obviously I would just buy formula and stuff, but yeah, I was looking at that and I’m like, there is no way I’m ever going to buy a house or move out. I can’t afford it. And I was like, ‘That’s just ridiculous.’” 

The dead-end feeling of living off of $30,000 a year eventually became too much to bear, so Alex decided to become an OnlyFans model. Her ex was far from a fan of this, as she explains.

“I suggested it a few times while we were together. I said, ‘I think I want to do an OnlyFans because I can’t live like this. I have no money.’ And he’s like, ‘No, that’s disgusting, selling yourself.’”

Lo and behold, after starting her page and enlisting a friend for help, Alex’s financial worries evaporated almost instantly. Alex became a mother prior to joining OnlyFans, so she was never a pregnant creator, but the Pregnant OnlyFans niche is popping in more ways than one!

“The first couple of weeks, I think I made maybe $800, $2,000, and then we just went really hard. In a couple of months I was making $100,000 USD a month. I knew I had to keep going, I was not going back to being a dental nurse.’”

Though she now had a steady cash flow, Alex’s ex-partner continually urged her to discontinue her page; a position Alex found ironic due to this gentleman’s reliance on child support funds.

“My ex is so reliant on child support. I earn so much more than him that I have to pay him 12 grand a year just for being a dad. He still has digs at me and says I’m disgusting, but he’s happy to take the money. If I wasn’t doing this job, he’d be paying me.” 

Alex Moore’s unbridled positive outlook is something she hopes will guide her on this new journey as a mother.

“I have this mentality where I just know everything’s going to work out for me. I’ll buy an $8,000 a month mortgage that I can hardly afford, and I’m like, ‘I’ll make it work.’ I would rather do something and then work it out than have the regret of missing out.”

“Being a mum has been the most incredible experience of my life. I’m forever grateful that I found out I was pregnant when I did, because I truly can’t imagine my life without my girl. She has made my world a million times better, and I love her more than words could ever describe.”

The platform that turned creators into millionaires is looking for new investment — and deserves more credit than it gets

In news that will surprise exactly nobody who has been paying attention to where the internet’s money actually goes, OnlyFans — the platform the mainstream tech press spent years condescending to — is in talks to sell about a 20% stake to San Francisco investment firm Architect Capital. The deal would value the company at more than $3 billion. For context, that’s more than Twitter was worth for most of its existence, and OnlyFans has never once had to beg advertisers to take it seriously. It found a better way.

The timing carries some weight. The deal comes just weeks after Leonid Radvinsky, the Ukrainian-born entrepreneur who purchased OnlyFans in 2018 and quietly transformed it into one of the most creator-friendly platforms on the internet, died of cancer at 43. He was famously reclusive, gave almost no interviews, had barely any public photos, and somehow managed to stay one of the least visible billionaires alive while making nearly $2 million per day from the platform in 2024. Whatever you think of the content OnlyFans hosts, Radvinsky built something that worked, and worked spectacularly, on terms that actually benefited the people producing the content. That’s rarer than it sounds.

OnlyFans takes a 20% cut of creator earnings. Instagram takes 100% of the attention and gives creators a follower count and a prayer. YouTube’s ad revenue share has been a subject of creator grievance for fifteen years. OnlyFans, for all its cultural baggage, built a model where the people doing the work got paid directly by the people who wanted to see it, with minimal algorithmic interference and no brand safety department deciding whose content was acceptable. It is, structurally, one of the most straightforward creator economy platforms ever built. And it got there before “creator economy” was even a phrase people used at conferences.

The numbers are hard to argue with. Spending on the platform hit $7.2 billion in 2024. The platform grew from 13 million users in 2019 to 188 million by 2021, a surge driven in large part by the pandemic when millions of creators, suddenly without their usual income streams, turned to OnlyFans and actually found a reliable one. That’s not an accident or a fluke. That’s a platform delivering on its promise at exactly the moment people needed it to.

Now, with Radvinsky gone, OnlyFans is navigating a transition that would be complicated for any company and is particularly complicated for this one. The Architect Capital deal, which will be a minority stake, could close as early as next month and would reportedly bring new financial services and products for creators. And here is where the story gets genuinely interesting, because this is a real and longstanding problem OnlyFans creators face. 

Many of them can’t get basic banking services. Payment processors have historically treated adult content creators like financial pariahs, leaving people with six-figure incomes unable to get a mortgage or a business account. If Architect Capital’s financial services background translates into actual infrastructure that helps creators manage and access their earnings like normal human beings, that would be a meaningful improvement in the lives of a lot of people the traditional financial system has spent years pretending don’t exist.

This is not OnlyFans’ first attempt at a sale. Reuters reported in May 2025 that the company had been in talks with LA-based Forest Road Company at an $8 billion valuation. In January, the Wall Street Journal reported Architect Capital was eyeing a majority stake at $5.5 billion. Now we’re at a minority stake and $3 billion. The number has drifted downward, which is either a sign of a cooling market for private tech assets generally or a reflection of the unique friction that comes with selling a business that makes squeamish investors reach for their pearls. Probably some of both.

OnlyFans has not been without its stumbles. The platform’s 2021 announcement that it would ban explicit content (which was swiftly reversed after an eruption of entirely justified creator fury) remains the clearest example of what happens when a platform forgets who built it. The reversal was the right call, and OnlyFans made it quickly. Age verification has been an ongoing challenge, and one the platform has faced regulatory and legal pressure over. These are real issues that deserve real solutions.

But the core of what OnlyFans built — a direct payment platform that lets creators control their content and their pricing and their relationship with their audience — is genuinely good. It gave economic agency to a category of creator who every other platform had either exploited or excluded. It made people real money. It treated the transaction honestly, which is more than most of Silicon Valley can say.

Radvinsky built something worth several billion dollars while saying very little about it publicly. There’s a version of this story where that’s suspicious. There’s also a version where a man simply built a product that worked, paid the people who used it, and let the results speak for themselves.

The results, as it turns out, are pretty loud.