Novas plataformas, novos riscos: percepções das mulheres brasileiras sobre o uso do OnlyFans e os desafios associados

Abstract

During the Coronavirus pandemic, the sale of erotic content on the internet became a source of income for many women who were negatively affected by the health, economic and social crisis that devastated the country. At the same time that the unemployment rate was growing in Brazil, OnlyFans, a platform used to sell pornographic content, registered a large increase in the number of users and started to appear frequently in the media as an alternative job for women. However, little was said about the dangers related to using the site and the implications of this growth. The popularization of OnlyFans in Brazil from 2020 onwards therefore raises several questions about the platformization of work, the sexual exploitation of women's bodies and the strengthening of neoliberal ideology in Latin American countries. These are the issues that were analyzed in this research, which aims to identify the consequences of using OnlyFans in the lives of Brazilian women. An inductive and empirical capture approach was used based on semi-structured interviews with nine content creators who started using the platform during the pandemic. Thus, qualitative methodology was used to conduct the interviews and analyze the narratives of these young women aged between 20 and 35 years. Impressions, content and categories were highlighted and analyzed in the transcribed statements, under confidentiality and secrecy, and it was concluded that the use of OnlyFans can bring some benefits and financial gains, but it also presents a series of risks such as the leakage of photos and videos, the worsening of mental health problems and the increase in online sexual harassment, among others. Due to the lack of security and legal-institutional regulation, the platform is configured as a dystopia of desires in the virtual environment, under the domain of the private sphere.