OnlyFans converts continuous intimacy into extractable labour: platform metrics, monetization and payment-processor constraints form a single feedback loop that shapes creators' content, earnings and self-understanding, creating infrastructural vulnerabilities the platform exploits.

Main Finding

The paper introduces "total self-commodification" to describe a form of platform labour—exemplified by OnlyFans—where the creator's continuous intimate self is the unit of extraction. The platform operationalizes a single feedback loop in which subscriber interactions, self-presentation decisions and earnings are mutually constitutive and indistinguishable, and it structurally exploits creators' partial/unstable recognition of their activity as wage labour. Structural vulnerability (including constraints imposed by payment-processor regimes) is presented not just as an outcome but as an active governance mechanism that shapes creators' behaviour and the labour process.

Key Points

• Conceptual contribution: "total self-commodification"—the self becomes a continuously extractable commodity mediated end-to-end by platform affordances and monetization mechanisms.
• Value-form specification: OnlyFans creates a platform-mediated feedback loop where subscriber dynamics, creators’ self-presentation, and remuneration are operationally inseparable; metrics and monetization jointly govern content practice.
• Governance through vulnerability: Structural precarity and dependence on payment processors (and their risk-averse policies) function as levers of platform governance, constraining what creators can do and pushing them toward particular monetized behaviours.
• Entrepreneurial self revisited: The Foucauldian "enterprising self" is infrastructurally intensified—platform tools, metrics and payment systems make the ideal of self-entrepreneurship indistinguishable from the labour process, while creators' recognition of their activity as paid labour remains partial and fluctuating, a gap the platform’s economic model exploits.
• Empirical grounding: Findings derive from 45 in‑depth interviews (France, Belgium, French-speaking Switzerland; Sept 2024–Mar 2025) and documentary analysis of 14 versions of OnlyFans' terms of service (2019–2025).
• Theoretical placement: Builds on relational labour literature, scholarship on platformised sex work, precarity theory, and recent work on the payment-processor regime governing adult-content platforms.

Data & Methods

• Qualitative interviews: 45 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with OnlyFans creators located in France, Belgium and French-speaking Switzerland, conducted Sept 2024–Mar 2025. Interviews probed labour practices, self-presentation strategies, perceptions of work, earnings dynamics, and constraints from platform/payout systems.
• Documentary analysis: Systematic review of 14 versions of OnlyFans' terms of service spanning 2019–2025 to trace formal policy changes, content/payout rules, and governance signals over time.
• Analytical approach: Thematic qualitative coding situated within theoretical frameworks of relational labour, precarity, payment-processor governance, and Foucauldian accounts of the entrepreneurial self; triangulation of interview data with policy texts to identify mechanisms of governance and value extraction.
• Scope & limitations: Focused on francophone European creators on OnlyFans; qualitative design prioritizes depth over generalizability. Findings are interpretive and aimed at theory-building about platform labour and governance rather than producing population-level estimates.

Implications for AI Economics

• Algorithmic feedback loops as economic primitives: The paper provides a concrete example of how platform metrics, recommendation dynamics and monetization can form a unified feedback mechanism that shapes labour supply, product differentiation and pricing—useful for economists modeling endogenous content supply under metric-driven platforms.
• Measurement challenges: Earnings and effort are tightly entangled with engagement metrics and self-presentation decisions; standard labour/economic measures (hours, output units) may misstate welfare or productivity for creators whose "product" is continuous self‑presentation. AI economists should develop metrics that capture continuous, relational labour and platform-induced incentives.
• Role of intermediaries and governance externalities: Payment processors exert off-platform constraints that are central to platform viability and worker behaviour. Economic models of platform markets should incorporate third-party intermediary constraints (payment risk policies, deplatforming risks) as key governance parameters affecting supply, pricing and market structure.
• Automation, augmentation and competition: AI tools that assist content creation (editing, personalization, deepfakes) may amplify commodification dynamics, change bargaining power, or alter the boundary between authentic and synthetic intimate labour. Models should consider substitution/augmentation effects of AI on relational/intimate labour.
• Data and training risks: Platforms that commodify intimate self-data produce rich training inputs for AI (behavioral signals, images, interaction patterns). This raises questions about consent, data rents, and whether platform owners capture AI-derived surplus—relevant to distributional analyses of AI gains.
• Policy and market-design implications: Findings support policy attention to algorithmic transparency, protections for platform dependent workers, and regulation of payment processors as infrastructural gatekeepers. For AI economists, this suggests evaluating regulation not only of recommendation algorithms but also of ancillary infrastructure that shapes labour markets.
• Research directions:
  • Quantitative modelling of the platform-mediated feedback loop: estimate elasticities of effort/self-presentation on engagement and earnings.
  • Experimental or panel studies to measure how changes in platform metrics or payment constraints affect creator behaviour and welfare.
  • Analysis of AI tool adoption among creators: effects on productivity, competition, and income distribution.
  • Welfare analysis of data-extraction from intimate labour and proposals for alternative revenue-sharing or governance arrangements.

By reframing platform sex work as an instance of continuous self-commodification governed by metrics and third-party intermediaries, the paper highlights mechanisms and empirical phenomena AI economists should incorporate when modelling platform-mediated labour markets, algorithmic governance, and the distributional impacts of AI and platform infrastructures.