Adult content actors and actresses are suing Meta Platforms Inc. and its subsidiaries, Instagram and Facebook, for lack of presence in social networks and a decrease in their income due to the boost to the "OnlyFans" platform.
Last Tuesday was the presentation of the colorful class action lawsuit by three adult artists on behalf of themselves and "all others similarly situated."
They allege that for many years they had commercial agreements with various adult entertainment websites: when paying customers came to those sites and watched these videos, the sites shared the payments with the performers.
It was an important tool for their presence on major social media platforms, particularly Instagram and Facebook, they said.
The complaint alleges that everything worked fine until early 2019 when the plaintiff, Dawn Dangaard a/k/a Alana Evans, allegedly had over 100k followers on Instagram at the time.
However, in October 2018, the complaint alleges that a Florida resident named Leonid Radvinsky acquired ownership of a company registered in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong called Fenix ??International Limited.
Fenix, through a Delaware subsidiary based in Florida, owned and operated "OnlyFans," an adult entertainment website.
After the acquisition, the plaintiffs began to notice that their posts were being deleted or hidden on the social media applications they used to promote their work.
The lawsuit alleges that while the plaintiffs' video websites experienced a steady decline in traffic, visits to the OnlyFans platform increased dramatically.
Charts included in the complaint show that OnlyFans grew from less than 3 million to nearly 12 million from June 2019 to June 2021.
OnlyFans "quickly became one of the most dominant players in the adult industry" and became the 86th largest website in the United States and the "fourth largest paid adult website in the world."
The complaint alleges that OnlyFans' growth was due to "gaining a huge advantage over its competitors by improperly manipulating behind-the-scenes databases and, in the process, harming thousands of small business owners who rely on social media..."
The key to the scheme was a database initially created by several social networking companies under the name "Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism".
Thus, adult content actors and actresses are suing Meta because many social media companies use the database "to quickly identify and remove potential terrorist content on their respective platforms."
The theory of the lawsuit is that after Radvinsky's acquisition of OnlyFans, the plaintiffs' information was surreptitiously added to the GIFCT database, resulting in their blacklisting as terrorists or dangerous persons even though they had no involvement in these activities.
Allegedly, this was done to harm the business of adult sites competing with OnlyFans, "in order to improve market position, revenue, power and benefit this platform and its owner, Radvinsky."
No response to the complaint has yet been filed.
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