The more money OnlyFans creators make, the more hell-bent leakers are to beat the paywall and share what they’ve stolen with the rest of the world — particularly on Reddit.
In fact, subreddits like r/MegaFiles4Free and r/OnlyFansLeaksDaily explicitly label themselves as places to share pilfered adult content from independent creators. “This community was made for people that wanna post and/or see OnlyFans without paying,” MegaFiles4Free, a subreddit with more than 100,000 subscribers, states in its description. Another, r/DailyMegaLeaks, has even prohibited comments to prevent the thieves’ names from being displayed, rendering it impossible for them to be found and reported by the creators themselves.
On these “mega” file subreddits, users are offered questionable links to download gigabytes’ worth of stolen OnlyFans material, often the entire catalogues of individual accounts. Many of the top posts are from the same set of users, some of whom have since been banned (or suspended) from Reddit. Nevertheless, their posts remain active on the subreddits.
Perhaps even more concerning are the numerous subreddits devoted to specific cities. On r/MiamiOnlyFansLeaks, for example, users submit screenshots of Instagram posts from various women in Miami. “Anyone Got Anything?” is a common header. In some cases, the women appear to have OnlyFans where they sell content; in others, it seems as though users are requesting nudes or sex tapes that have otherwise been leaked. The same dynamic exists for numerous other cities — a la r/ThotsNYC, to name just one.
Rather predictably, r/Piracy has become a source for much of this leakage as well, with many posts asking for the details of not only where to find stolen photos and videos, but instructions on how to pirate OnlyFans content directly from the platform. It doesn’t matter, however, if these redditors are only downloading the material for their own personal use, with no intention of distributing it further: Any copying whatsoever is against the rules of OnlyFans.
With these rules supported by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, OnlyFans has said that it’s been pursuing action against such leaks (and leakers). In April, a spokesperson told The Independent that a series of users had been illegally copying and distributing content they had previously paid for, and that OnlyFans had successfully worked to have about three-quarters of this stolen material taken down. Meanwhile, Reddit occasionally acts against the subreddits used to illegally share nudes there — e.g., a subreddit similar to ThotsNYC, called r/IrishSluts, was permanently removed in 2019 for revenge porn. But it’s unclear how regularly the internet giant conducts these types of sweeps.
In fairness, it’s far from just a Reddit problem. There are many, many, many other leak sites out there devoted to preventing creators from getting the money they’re owed. And when one gets shut down, a copycat always emerges. It’s a game of Whac-A-Mole that’s getting as big as OnlyFans itself.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
