How did TikTok become a hotbed of porn and what interesting things can you find there?
TikTok has unexpectedly taken over the porn industry.
Although the video-sharing app prohibits explicit content, TikTok-style videos, often filmed and edited within the app itself, are finding fans on other platforms.
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Gwen’s Story
Gwen, a 25-year-old sex worker from Toronto, immediately saw an opportunity when she noticed a trend on TikTok where people personify popular restaurant chains (choosing a restaurant and depicting it as a person). Seeing this as a perfect fit for creating pornographic videos, she decided to try her hand at being “Milf Danny.”
In her TikTok-inspired video, Gwen plays a waitress at Denny’s (an American table-service restaurant chain), seducing customers in the break room. The video, the trailer for which was uploaded to Pornhub, became one of Gwen’s breakout hits of 2020.
The video’s success illustrates TikTok’s profound influence on the sex industry. For example, Pornhub is full of videos mimicking one of the app’s trends and challenges, as well as sexualized compilations of clips uploaded from TikTok (often without the creator’s consent or knowledge). Unfortunately, this can also include minors.
This phenomenon is partly due to the app’s “For You” tab. This displays popular clips and recommendations, increasing the likelihood that a video will go viral and be shared elsewhere.
Gwen, who has amassed 125,600 followers on TikTok since September last year, says the service has allowed her to connect with a completely new and a diverse group of followers she couldn’t reach on Twitter or Instagram. She also emphasizes the importance of TikTok in growing her sex work.
The app also allowed Gwen to show fans a different side of her personality. She even used TikTok Live to directly communicate with her followers.
Story Sam
Sam, a 28-year-old sex worker from San Francisco, also uses the app’s editing features to create videos of herself. Transition editing, which allows users to suddenly change clothing or go from fully clothed to naked, has become a particularly popular feature among sex workers using the app.
Nudity and sexual acts violate TikTok’s Community Guidelines, but some of these types of videos bypass the algorithm. Furthermore, videos don’t have to contain explicit content to attract traffic to other platforms.
Moreover, as Sam says, there are ways to circumvent TikTok’s policies. She argues that it’s possible to comply with TikTok’s rules and still make a lot of money. A little more ingenuity is needed. As the situation with sex workers on the app becomes increasingly hostile, this ingenuity could breathe new life into TikTok videos beyond the service itself.
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Sex workers on other platforms
The demand for TikTok-style pornographic videos and the app’s robust editing tools have led to videos being uploaded to other platforms like Pornhub and OnlyFans.
Using free social media as a paid job search is nothing new. However, since the introduction of FOSTA-SESTA, a US law aimed at curbing sexual exploitation (suspending the Sex Traffickers Empowerment Act (SESTA) and allowing states and victims to fight the Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA)), it has become a challenge for sex workers to promote their services online.
A bill introduced in 2018 attempted to shut down websites facilitating “human trafficking” by completely banning messages from sex workers to avoid potential legal challenges, which often puts them in more dangerous situations.
For example, Instagram and Tumblr were very popular platforms among sex workers before FOSTA-SESTA.
And during the pandemic, platforms like OnlyFans have skyrocketed in popularity. TikTok-style videos, posted on the app or other platforms, offer a new way to reach audiences.
The sex community has become particularly vulnerable to viruses. Therefore, sex workers are actively using TikTok and other platforms, as they are unable to offer their services offline.
TikTok also has its own “hot” mirrors.
The largest is r/TikTokXXX. This mirror has over 61,000 members and gained over 20,000 new subscribers in 2021 alone. However, according to one moderator, only 30-40% of videos on the service actually come from TikTok. In most cases, TikTok’s logo and aesthetic are used to attract traffic and connect with viewers aged 18 and older.
Finally, Generation Z and young millennials are more willing to pay for adult content than previous generations. This is especially true when the video’s protagonist is its creator. This reflects a broader shift in preference for “homemade” pornographic videos, with “amateur porn” being the most popular category in the US and the third most popular category globally.
Pornography has always been a “remake” genre. There are pornographic versions of everything popular, and they appear as soon as something becomes popular. There are even numerous pornographic and news sites that have redesigned their sites for TikTok to capitalize on the site’s immense popularity.
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There’s also a darker side to “borrowing child-created aesthetics,” especially on platforms like r/TikTokXXX, where the creator is assumed to be a minor. This illustrates the consent and legal issues surrounding the distribution of TikTok videos on other platforms.
While these videos may not contain explicit content, if posted out of context without the creator’s permission, they can pornify what shouldn’t be considered pornographic content.
One of the r/TikTokXXX mods claims that content on the platform is intended for distribution with the creator’s consent, otherwise the video will be removed. Pornhub faced similar issues last year when the adult site was discovered to have uploaded a video edited from a TikTok trend popular among minors.
In January, TikTok changed its settings, making videos created by users under 16 private by default.
Last November, several accounts belonging to sex workers were deleted as a result of the so-called “TikTok purge.” A TikTok spokesperson stated that the safety of the community is a top priority.
For many sex workers, the need to remain on as many platforms as possible outweighs other concerns.
