In August, OnlyFans seemed to leave online adult performers in the lurch by announcing they’d no longer allow explicit content on the site. A few days later, they changed their minds, announcing that they’d continue to allow for porn on their site.
It’s great that they’ll continue to allow explicit content, but let’s not kid ourselves: OnlyFans still sucks. Many content creators are sick of the porn-negative platform profiting off their work, and paying customers no longer want to put their money toward a platform that doesn’t support its creators.
With that in mind, there are a handful of alternative sites that offer similar services to OnlyFans, but better treatment of both subscribers and creators (not to mention higher payouts). One of these is Unlockd.Me, a relatively new but rapidly expanding platform that allows all kinds of adult performers to host subscriptions, share photos and videos and sell pay-per-view content.
First off, who’s behind Unlockd? Is this another site run by rich corporate dudes?
Yep — rich corporate dudes are a factor here. In fact, Unlockd appears to be run by Geri Halliwell’s ex-boyfriend, Anton Kaszubowski. Unsure who Halliwell is? Maybe you know her by her stage name: Ginger Spice.
Unlockd’s terms of service lists the site as a property of Fans Media Limited, a company based in London and incorporated in March 2020. A little more digging reveals Kaszubowski and Jonathan Weinsztok as the directors of Fans Media Limited. A Twitter account for Kaszubowski states that he’s a “senior executive and investor in betting, gambling and casual gaming,” and links to his investment firm, Greenlaw Limited. (Unlockd isn’t listed anywhere on the Greenlaw site, though.) Kaszubowksi also appears to have extensive experience in online media, and also briefly dated Halliwell in 2013.
Far less information is available on Weinsztok, though records list him as the director of both Fans Media Limited and Social Software LTD, a company classified as “ready-made interactive leisure and entertainment software development” in the U.K.
This is significant for one reason: Neither of these men appear to be sex workers. As platforms like OnlyFans threaten to purge sex workers, it’s become all the more important for some creators and subscribers to focus their attention on sites that are owned and operated by sex workers themselves. One of these is Justfor.Fans, though it’s not without its own controversies, as well.
Is Unlockd trustworthy?
Seemingly, yes. Unlockd has solid reviews on Trustpilot, earning four out of five stars based on 15 reviews. This is much higher than some of their competitors, including OnlyFans, which has a rating of one-and-a-half stars and 1,500 reviews. Fansly currently has three stars.
What’s in it for content creators?
One rather significant benefit to Unlockd is that they give creators an 85 percent cut, compared to OnlyFans’ 80 percent. Like OnlyFans, you can charge for subscriptions, custom content, chatting and pay-per-view offerings, and you’re also allowed to choose your own prices for everything.
That said, the platform’s discoverability features far surpass that of OnlyFans. On the Unlockd homepage, subscribers are presented with tons of new faces of performers they might be interested in, crossing all genres of kink, gender and race. While there are no official numbers on performer demographics available, Unlockd at least appears to feature more men and people of color than other platforms, most of which primarily showcase conventionally attractive white women.
Unlockd also allows people to search performers according to a variety of filters, like location (narrowed down to country), eye color, age and occupation like “stripper” or “porn star.” Pay-per-view videos can be searched according to tags as well, which include a massive list of kinks and fetishes. Creators have the option of selling these videos outside of their subscription offerings, too.
Because of all this, creators have a significant opportunity to be found by new subscribers on Unlockd without extra outside promotion, and that 85 percent cut could translate to more money in their pockets, too.
They don’t currently accept crypto for those who want to avoid issues with traditional financial processors, but a representative for the company confirmed via email that they intend to integrate it onto the site soon.
What’s in it for me, the hypothetical subscriber?
As mentioned above, Unlockd offers numerous ways of finding exactly what kind of performer or content you’re looking for. If you have ultra specific fetishes — like people getting medical-style shots into their buttcheeks — you can find it on there. If you’re looking for a vanilla, girl-or–boy-next-door type to look at photos of and occasionally chat with, you can find that there, too. You can also feel decent knowing a bit more of your hard-earned dollars are going directly to the creator.
Who’s on Unlockd?
You can find just about every type of performer on Unlocked, but there are a handful of big names who’ve moved onto the platform. Victoria Zdrok, a 1994 Playboy Playmate and sex therapist, has expanded her adult content offerings onto Unlockd with a mix of free and subscription-based photos and videos. She currently charges $5 per month, a significant discount from her OnlyFans, for which she charges $25.
You can also find performers like “spoiled and busty vixen” Londynn Vega on Unlockd, as well as Dollscult, “the most anti-human and Satanic sect composed of a brother and a sister that share the same girlfriend, living together in Budapest.” Pick your poison!
Should I join?
If you like paying for porn (as you should) or making it, then sure! While there’s certainly reason to be suspicious about the owners not being sex workers themselves, that’s hardly unique to Unlockd, so it shouldn’t sway you too much.
Likewise, Unlockd still has some growing to do, but it seems to be doing so rapidly. Last week, their front page stated they had 586,000 subscribers. Today, it says there are 623,000, with an additional $2 million in payouts distributed between then and now. For creators looking to expand, Unlockd is as good a platform as any, with a higher payout and decent reviews from fellow creators. For potential subscribers, Unlockd has tons of creators to choose from, so if you don’t already have someone to support in mind, you’ll quickly find someone new.
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.
