July 12, 2022 • 39 mins
Alex and Patricia track down the family behind OnlyFans, the site that has transformed online porn by shifting power back to performers. But there is a whole other side to the OnlyFans story.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin before we start a warning. Our investigation looks into
power and the porn industry. This episode contains adult themes.
In previous episodes, we've told you about men at the
(00:36):
top of porn, their ambition, their power battles, their relentless
efforts to remain unknown to the world. We looked at
how they cornered the most lucrative parts of the adult business,
either by owning tech platforms or production studios or both.
(00:57):
Porn profits flowed to owners and middlemen, but not so
much to performers. Now we're going to tell you about
the company that reset the ballot, the company that, whether
it intended to or not, managed to shift money and
power back to performers in a huge way. You may
(01:20):
have heard its name. He became so popular during the pandemic.
Even my mother had heard its name. We're talking about
Only Fans. Only Fans as a social media platform just
like those you use already, but which allows you to
set a monthly subscription price, ensuring that any media you
upload is fully hidden until your fans pay your subscription.
(01:44):
We are not the average demographic. We are on the
more mature sides of your typical webcam broadcaster, This is Peppermint.
It's the stage name she uses for the adult enterprise
she runs with her husband, Dusty, also a stage name.
Our shows can run anywhere between four to eight hours
(02:06):
eight hours time. All of that is sexual engagement. We
have amazing conversations with our viewers. We like to dive
deep into the meaning of life and relationships and sexuality.
We met at a pawn event in la where Dusty
and Peppermint were promoting their business and meeting fans. They're
(02:27):
mainly known for their live video work on campsites those
a tower shows that can include sex, fire, spinning, acrobatic yoga,
and cooking, trying to promote real sex between real people
rather than a fantasy scenario created by a studio. Over time,
(02:48):
they've branched out selling clips on video platforms and reaching
their most loyal supporters through an only Fans account. So
with the explosion of people turning to only Fans, turning
to content creation, turning to online work, I think there
is a lot more acceptance of it in the mainstream audience.
(03:08):
Only Fans is a platform that launched in twenty sixteen.
It's basically a special kind of social media site. It
lets you message followers or upload videos or posts, just
like Instagram or Facebook. The twist with only Fans is
that your content lives behind a paywall. Visitors pay you
(03:30):
to view it. They can even pay you to produce
media just for them. This seemingly small difference the paywall
changed how a whole generation of online stars earned their living. Influencers, musicians,
fitness instructors, but especially porn stars. Only Fans made the
(03:51):
industry's most famous performers seriously rich. Some have earned millions
and allowed them to make videos at home on their
own terms. Most Only Fans creators are and big stars,
but more like Peppermint and Dusty, the PM has allowed
them to generate a modest study income. It made it
(04:14):
easier than ever to make money from porn until the
moment Only Fans announced that porn wouldn't be welcome anymore.
Can you tell us about the day that Only Fans
banned porn? We had actually been on a trip up
to the mountains, and we had gone just to a
different locations so we could shoot some new content specifically
(04:38):
for only Fans. I opened up the app on my
phone and I see Twitter, and I see all these
posts about only fans banning porn. So I remember driving
down the mountains seeing our follower account just drop literally
in half, which means we also lost half of our income.
(04:58):
I think that these rules and these changes almost affect
the smaller creators more so. The platform that totally transformed
the pawn industry decided to ban pawn to become a
safe for work service. Then just one week later, Only
Fans changed its mind. Pawn was okay again. They canceled
(05:20):
the cancelation. It was so farcical. Only Fans made headlines
around the world. And what about them when they reversed
the band? How did you feel them? You always kind
of sit there and wonder when it's going to happen again,
and you know what's going to be the next trigger.
Why are they going to do it this time? What happened?
(05:46):
We decided to seek out only fans and where it
came from a close knit family from Essex, the New
Jersey of England. They're the most miscast porn barons you
can imagine, and yet they somehow confirmed power and porn
is all about the payments. I'm Alex Barker, I'm Patrician
(06:10):
Nelson from Pushkin Industries. And the Financial Times. This is
hot Money, Act one financial domination. We set out to
(06:53):
follow Only Fans to its source and it brought us
to a big gated house on the south coast of England,
the home of Danny Harwood. Danny was the very first
creator to join Only Fans when it launched. Hi everyone,
my name's Danny. Welcome to my Only Fans page. Come
(07:13):
enjoy me have a little chat. Can I see all
my sexy selfies? And let's have some fun boys. But
before we get to that part of the story, we
have to tell you how she first met Tim Stokely,
the mind behind Only Fans. It all started about twelve
(07:35):
years ago. Danny was in her late twenties making her
living as a glamor model and one day a man
called Tim walked into her life with a mad cat
plan to transform her into goddess Danielle. So can you
tell us when and where you first met him? He
(07:57):
contacted me for a photo shoet, having seen me on TV,
and he turned up in a all roy suit with
a briefcase and a copy of The Financial Times under
his arm. It was just a bit who is this guy?
(08:20):
Tim was carrying a Financial Times because his father was
a banker. His brother was a banker, and Tim may
have become a banker too if he didn't have other
interests he wanted to pursue. He was starting a new business,
a fetish side called glam Worship. He sort of looked
(08:41):
like he was just about to go for a board meeting,
not a photo shoot. That he was young, a fairly
good looking guy, and just very smart and very well spoken.
And he's like, right, okay, Danny, and if you just
like just sit over there, and he's like, just look
(09:02):
at the camera. He was so wonder prepared. He was
so nervous. This was Tim's first shoot for glam Worship.
Danny was the first model. He used his briefcase as
a camera stand. And here's the extraordinary part. The origins
of Only Fans can be traced straight back to the
(09:23):
kink the website served this fetish for financial domination. Out
of the photoshoot would emerge Goddess Danielle her Page told
visitors it was the luckiest day of their pathetic existence.
Girls would talk about financially dominating men. That's what the
(09:46):
fetish was. So the woman is in charge and therefore
they should give their money to the woman, and because
they're not worthy of that money. Financial domination, the art
of the finndom is not something we have made up
for a Financial Times podcast about money and porn. We promise, Hello, slaves, Well,
(10:11):
you've probably been watching me for quite a while now,
haven't you seeing me grow from strength to strengths? By now?
I have lots of loyal little followers, lots of loyal submissives.
Some people will literally pay for the thrill of becoming
(10:34):
a financial slave. Tim was gripped scenarios for Danny to
perform to her fans or pay pets. Danny's financial slaves
never actually handed over all their money even if they
wanted to. They probably couldn't. The tech was still clunky,
almost hacked together. Danny's pay pets could buy her stuff
(10:57):
from an Amazon wish list or send checks to a
numbered postbox. But the pay pets could never get Goddess
Danielle's personal attention. They couldn't ask for her custom videos
or directly fill her bank account with money. The flaws
were obvious. Tim launched other ventures, hoping to solve them.
(11:21):
Many other ventures, and after some painful trial and error,
in twenty sixteen, something new came together a sight then
actually worked Only Fans a platform that combined interaction, tailor
made content, and a direct connection between the fan and
(11:42):
the performer, including yes payment, with only Fans taking a
twenty percent cut. Danny was one of the first to
hear Tim's idea, It's like, so people can tip you
on that. I was like, what, they can tip you?
It's like yeah, I was like, okay, that's a game changer.
(12:03):
This was the start of a new era. If video
streaming made pawn three, Only Fans was one of the
sites that began to turn the tide. People were paying
for pawn again, actually getting their credit cards out, and
not just to pay pornographers, a studio or a website owner.
(12:25):
They were paying the performers direct. It was a slow start,
but as new features were introduced, partly on Danny's advice,
the money started rolling in through Only Fans. Danny found
a way to tap her Instagram and Twitter. Following I
went from earning one month between three and six thousand dollars.
(12:48):
My next earnings was twenty two thousand. Tim asked Danny
to spread the word, so she spoke with friends at
the Glamor TV channel where she performed Girls as this website,
you have to join it. You look at my bank statement.
To look at the statement. This is what I'm being paid,
this is what you could earn. They're like, wow, so
(13:08):
quickly find them up. Danny told us that performers started
leaving because they were earning so much money from their
only Fans accounts and keeping most of it going into
the changing room. One day and my boss had put
these posters up in the changing room walled saying that
you're not allowed to film any content for only fans,
(13:29):
otherwise you're going to get the sack. They hated it.
Danny says she eventually became the first to have a
million dollar page to her and for many established performers,
the control only Fans provided was a sort of liberation.
It gave them freedom and the power that comes with money.
(13:52):
They were being paid well enough to have leverage in
the industry, something that in an age of free porm
was sorely lacking. Today, Danny is still on the platform,
not as God as Danielle, but under another name. She
crowned herself to the Queen of Only Fans. After all
(14:15):
these years, she is still friends with the Stokely family,
and that's who we spoke with next. That's after the
break act two, The Stokelease. We hopped in a car
(14:39):
with our producer Pete Sale and headed to bishop Stortford,
a rural commuter town to the northeast of London. It's
near the home of the Stokelease, but not a typical
spot for a company headquarters, which I should Where are
we going and why? I don't even know how to
pronounce it. The Bishop's destroyed great staff podcasts already. We're
(15:07):
in the car. We're on our way to meet up
with Tim and guys Stokely. We are walking past the
only Fans headquarters, which are in a converted barn called
Fish Barn. It looks like the south of Sweden, but
(15:29):
we're just next to us are a couple of grain silos.
It feels pretty rural. There's a thatched roof over there.
Who's not why you expect businesses not make me think
adult content. We were greeted by the founder, Tim Stokely
and taken to a conference room overlooking a pond. My
first podcast. Yeah yeah. Tim doesn't often do recorded interviews.
(15:54):
He has a bit of a playboy image in the press.
His instagram is full of glam shots of Abitha and
sharp cut suits, but when we met him, that's not
how he came across at all. He was almost shy,
hardly the guide that was once called the King of
homemade porn. He first ended up in the adult industry
(16:16):
in part because the financial crash hit the job market
in the city of London. Since he couldn't follow his
father and brother into banking, he tried something else, starting
internet businesses from scratch. Lots of his ideas failed miserably,
but the ones in the adult business pointed him in
the right direction. A lot of the models we were
(16:39):
working with were getting inundated with private requests asking to
produce these tailored custom videos. The seed of Only Fans
was planted when Only Fans launched. It was intended to
be for everyone. There was no homepage with porn stars,
no search function to find them. There still isn't. It
(17:02):
was really designed to be an add on service for
the social media profiles that people already had. It allowed
them to monetize their online following, but the creators, musicians,
or influencers or fitness instructors had to bring their own
fan base with them, and the first ones to do
(17:23):
it were the porn stars. I think the adult industry
is typically ahead of the curve when it comes to
new tech, and I think content behind a payball model
really really suited. How did you raise the money for it?
That was my father, Guy, Guy Stokely is a former
(17:43):
merchant banker. If Tim is an unlikely pornographer, Guy is
a complete fish out of water. Before only fans Guy
was retired. He's mild mannered and ever so polite. Tim
phone me and said, I've got this really good idea, Dad,
and I kind of explained that the premise of paid
(18:05):
social media, and he told me about it, and I said, yeah,
that's interesting. Picture that thought bubble coming from Guy's head.
Oh god, not again. There was a healthy amount of skepticism.
Guid invested in some of the previous platforms. Some have
gone really well, some really badly. After many attempts that
(18:29):
to convince him, I remember Guy saying, okay, okay, but
this is the last one. The early days for Tim
were a hard slog. He sent hundreds of emails to
performers and influencers trying to explain how much money they
could make on Only Fans. I remember receiving one email
(18:49):
from one influencer saying, this is hands down the most
stupid business idea I've ever heard in my life. Only
Fans launched in twenty sixteen. One thing that really put
the wind in its sails was a clever referral program
giving creators a cut of other people's earnings if they
brought to the platform. Guy thought Tim's goal of half
(19:12):
a million pounds revenue in twenty seventeen was totally ridiculous.
They ended up with two point four million pounds. A
lot of the creators were adult performers and sitting with
the stoke. Please, that's something you can easily forget. They
don't seem like pawn. People mentioned nudity, and Guy almost
(19:35):
starts to blush. I didn't think of it as being adult.
I wasn't interested in adult, but it was about sporting. Tim.
This was genuinely a family business. Tim was CEO and guide,
the chief financial officer and supportive father. Tim's sister and
his two brothers were involved. Two. But then in twenty eighteen,
(19:58):
at a point when only Fans was growing fast and
showing it had real potential, the Stoke please did something surprising.
They decided it was time to bring in an outside
of fester. They sold only Fans but stayed on as
the executive team. Within a year of selling, their platform
just exploded in popularity. Only Fans is massively a part
(20:22):
of the pop cultures. Igeist right now, Cardibi's on the platform,
Chris Brown, Now, why are you tipping this? Rich man?
I think I'm gonna start a holy fans Please do it?
Lonny Love, Michael B. Jordan's mustache. Beyonce even name dropped
only fans in a song if she might start at
(20:42):
only fans. During the pandemic, it reached two million creators
and one hundred and eighty million users, A significant proportion
of them were buying or selling pawn. Only Fans gave
the tired old pawn industry a new lease of life,
and everything on the site was behind a paywall, so
(21:04):
much harder for children to access. But with the success
came a lot of bad press for Tim. There were,
of course stereotypes about the bling essex man making millions
from pawn, but also unease over only fans, normalizing pornography,
making it seem just like any other career a lot
(21:28):
of men and women saw the huge payout to top
porn stars and thought, I can give this a try.
But most couldn't build a big enough following, and some
probably realized porn wasn't something you can just dabble in
and regretted trying anyway. It's fair to say Only Fans
(21:49):
really caught a cultural moment and courted plenty of controversy.
We of course focused on the business side and the money.
What you need to understand is what makes Only Fans different.
It succeeded not just because it could take money, but
because it could pay it out. It built a financial
(22:11):
bridge from fans credit cards straight to the bank accounts
of creators. The bigger Only Fans became, the more its
reputation was associated with a pawn revival, and the more
nervous banks got moving its money around the world. So
nervous one bank even stopped providing a personal bank account
(22:33):
to Tim's brother, a former banker, just because he was
involved in running Only Fans. It's a very strange way
to act, but it was, you know. That's what happened. Then,
in the summer of twenty twenty one, the dam burst
Only Fans. The platform that changed the adult industry announced
(22:54):
it was going to ban pawn Performers were totally stunned.
Only fans will prohibit the posting of any content containing
sexually explicit kind act. That leaves a lot of people
worried about what's going to happen into the At least
tens of thousands of creators on the platform, who, particularly
during the pandemic, have made a lot of money from
(23:17):
the safety of their haunts. Hiss, think back to the
decision to ban explicit content, and yeah, what were you
trying to achieve when you first made that announcement. Well,
it certainly wasn't a strategic move really, Yeah, absolutely, Here,
we have to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars
(23:42):
to creators globally each month. You know, when you have
to move that amount of money, you depend upon large
investment banks, and we were seeing an increasing amount of
wires being flagged, with some investment banks citing things like
reputational risk. The precise trigger of their decision remains unclear. Here,
(24:03):
Tim is describing the choice as a practical matter. His
company's transfers were being flagged, marked down for extra checks
by banks moving their money around the world. A lot
of banks don't want to be associated with porn. The
abrupt announcement completely through the industry. The uproar from performers
(24:26):
was deafening. Big stars or less well known performers like
Peppermint and Dusty. They relied on only fans for their livelihoods,
and they were furious. And after a week of mayhem,
only Fans reversed its decision. Porn went from banned too
okay again all inside seven days. People who earn money
(24:50):
on the website only fans may have a bad case
of whiplash tonight, what a walk back. I guess The
question is has the damage already been done? Some users
really saw this as a move of only fans selling out.
Only Fans said its original decision to ban porn was
due to pressure from banking and payment services, but now
it has secured assurances necessary to keep things as is.
(25:14):
To everyone watching, the handling looked totally botched. It was
mocked on social media and compared to Domino's trying to
ban Peter. The lack of any convincing explanation at the
time also fed all sorts of conspiracy theories. Tim actually
insists the reversal was enabled by an interview he did
(25:36):
with me over the phone last year. It was for
a piece in the Financial Times that brands straight after
the ban, where he named some of the banks causing
only fans problems. After that article was published, he said
the mood changed, the banks gave him the assurances he needed.
Do you have regrets on how you handled it? Looking back?
(26:03):
Not on how it was handled. I don't think we
had much of a choice, but I deeply regret amount
of concern an anxiety it caused. I mean for a
lot of people it was it's like being cut down
at the knees and why should they trust any fans
not to do this again? And well, I you know,
(26:24):
I think what this, what this put a spotlight on,
was the discriminatory policies within the banking system, and that's
where the focus is. I think Tim here is talking
about banks making life difficult for companies just because they're
associated with adult content. The problem isn't necessarily allowing pawn
(26:48):
on a platform. Twitter, for instance, permits adult content on
parts of its platform and hosts lots of pawn without
much trouble. The issue start when a company has so
much pawn or makes so much money from pawn it
starts to look like a pawn company. After that, basic
(27:10):
finance dries up, banking becomes harder and a lot more expensive.
There are lots of people in the pawn industry who
find it hard to believe that only fans got cold
feet for a mundane reason like financing. They are still
convinced the whole pawn band fiasco was actually a publicity stunt,
(27:32):
some cunning plan that's that's entirely false. I think we've
perhaps been victim to some you know, unfair reporting, which
you know it has led to some criticism that is
based on moral outrage rather than evidence or facts or statistics.
Couldn't you have had that conversation with your financial partners before,
(27:56):
you know, if they were all happy? Couldn't you have
gone to your financial partners? I said, we could we
have handled it in a different way. Years of course
we could. Um, but um, We're happy where we ended. Huh.
At the end of our interviews, the Stoke Please took
us to their office. In there was another brother wearing
(28:20):
a wooly jumper that looked like an early Christmas present.
There were ducks wandering around a patio, crooked trinkets on
the desks. It seemed just a setting for a charming
family business. But for only fans. Something didn't quite seem right,
and it wasn't. We'll be right back Act three, reading
(28:50):
the fine print. Within three weeks of us visiting, the
Stoke Please had left only fans. Tim stepped down as
chief executive and guy and the rest of the family followed.
Just like that, the Stoke Please had gone. We'll admit it.
We were confused. We called them to ask what happened.
(29:12):
We didn't get much of an answer. Now, the story
of the Stoke These and only fans that you heard earlier,
that was all true, the family business, the way only
fans democratized porn. But we later learned that was only
one side of the story. Like looking at a movie
sets from a single camera. It didn't explain why the
(29:35):
Stokelees left only fans, or that crazy hokey cokey over
banning porn, or why they sold their company when it
was doing so well in twenty eighteen. To figure out
what was going on, we need to rewind and look
out of shot, and that starts with the current owner,
(29:56):
the guy who bought only Fans from the Stoke Lease
in twenty eighteen. Now, plenty of investors have attempted to
buy only Fans over the years, mainstream investors. But when
the Stoke Lease sold, it was to a man called
Leo Radvinski, a forty year old Ukrainian American who made
(30:17):
his fortune in the pawn industry. We'd love to have
spoken to him, but he declined he's not one for publicity.
Here's what Tim told us about Leo when we visited.
You know, he's been absolutely joy to work with and
such a smart guy, and there's a huge reason we
(30:38):
are where we are. Remember, in twenty eighteen, Only Fans
was a fast growing business, but it hadn't really caught fire.
The good times were ahead. So why did the Stoke
Lease give it all up to Leo Radvinski. Tim was
kg with his reasons for selling only Fans, but he
(31:02):
did give us a few clues. I mean, what I
can tell you is it's one of the best decisions
we made. It's very kind of hands on and adds
so much value to the technical part of the business.
And then he also works to an extent on the
payments side. We didn't think much of it at a
time Leo os tech. He made his career running a
(31:27):
live video porn side called my Free Camps. But when
we listened back, we realized the intriguing part was the
second half of that sentence. Tim said. Leo also worked
on the payment side, which raises one blindingly obvious question.
Why was Leo, the seasoned pornographer, helping a family of
(31:50):
bankers with payments? So you know, I've been looking for
an explanation of why the Stokely's sold Only Fans. I
think I found something, But I have a little confession
to make. Yeah, it was that. One of my new
(32:13):
habits is reading the terms and conditions on porn sites.
The legal fine print. Well, you've sent me one. Should
I read it out loud? Go ahead? So it says
you may not create, upload, post, display, or distribute user
content that is sexually explicit. It doesn't sound like a
(32:34):
porn site, right, No. Well those are the original terms
and conditions for only Fans from twenty sixteen, So no,
porn Only Fans didn't allow explicit content from the start,
nothing exactly, and it more or less stayed that way
for a year and a half. After Only Fans launched
(32:55):
even though there was lots of pawn on the site.
I mean, this really transformed how I understood the whole
Only Fans venture. It may well have been crucial to
the entire business model. Was claiming to be palm free,
and if you don't have palm, you don't have payment trouble.
(33:15):
The Stoke Please could benefit from easier, cheaper payment processing
they'd get like any mainstream platform. Well that's a big
advantage in the porn business. I mean, Only Fans stood
out when it launched because it only took a twenty
percent cut of a performer's earnings, when most campsites take
(33:37):
an average of fifty percent or more. So one of
the reasons they could offer that was cheaper payment processing.
And so the Stoke Please just sidestepped higher costs by
denying there was any porn on the site exactly. It's amazing.
So when did they admit that there was born on
(33:59):
the side. In the spring of twenty eighteen, and that's
when the Stoke Please introduced a new adult payment processor,
a different financial service men to handle all the explicit accounts,
presumably a much more expensive payment processor. And people in
the industry told me the only fans. Around this time
(34:21):
began to struggle with payments in particular, and within six months, Hey,
Presto the Stoke please had sold only fans. And remember
Leo is known in the pawn business as a master
of payments. You had to be to run at pawn camsite.
I mean, there's lots of micropayments. It's just in the
(34:43):
nature of the business. And suddenly you think of all that,
everything that Tim said about selling to Leo just made
a lot more sense when the payments side got more
difficult they had to turn to an expert. What I
can tell you is it's one of the best decisions
we made. It's not much value in speculating where we'd
(35:03):
be if we hadn't done it. We'd love to ask
Leo how he does it, how he his bangs and
payment processors on side, But like most of Pawn's biggest
money makers, he's not the time to give interviews. Neither
would his new management team, who are usually very media friendly.
(35:24):
The reason is partly Leo's vision for the company. He
came from the porn world, but he always saw the
mainstream potential of only fans. For him, that's only fans'
future fitness instructors and musicians, and that explains a lot.
When we talk to the Stokeleys about the decision to
(35:44):
ban Pawn last August, it never seemed like they really
believed in it. In reality, it was Leo's call to
him the mainstream promise of only fans was not worth
risking for Pawn, however much money it made. He has
visions of bringing in mainstream investors or even floating only
(36:06):
Fans on the stock market. Only Fans has promised not
to ditch porn performers again. People like Peppermint and her
husband Dusty, who we heard from earlier in this episode.
I mean, they say one thing and then a week
later they say another thing, and it makes one very
(36:26):
very hard to trust what's happening with the site itself.
When is this going to happen again? So it makes it,
you know, very precarious. Peppermint and Dusty stuck with only
Fans because it's an important stream of income and it
didn't seem right to be cutting off loyal subscribers. It's felt,
in some ways like going back to an abusive partner.
(36:48):
You know, you don't want to really stay there, but
you're kind of stuck. You don't have a lot of choice.
I'm hoping that it means only good things. You know,
maybe Tim Stokely was tired of having to deal with
the credit card companies and all the legislation and the rules,
So handing the reins over to somebody else could possibly
be a good thing. That's my hope. Indeed, there is
(37:11):
a weird parallel between all the people we've spoken to
and told you about in this episode, Peppermint and Dusty,
the Stokely family, and Leo Radvinski, the pornographer trying to
go mainstream. You could even make a link to Danny,
the goddess of financial domination, who had no way to
be tipped by her pay pets. What all their stories
(37:35):
taught us was this, if you're not the master of
your business's payment system, very simply means somebody else is
in charge. Only fans empowered performers by giving them away
to receive direct payments from fans. But because only fans
doesn't control its own payment system, it is caught in
(37:58):
a bind. It is reliant on pornshy payment companies on
one side to take in money, and on pornshy bangs
on the other to pay it out. That's where to
real power lies. A finance world that seems to have
a muddled and bizarre relationship with the porn industry and
the money it brings. What does this all mean for
(38:21):
porn today? That's our next episode, the season finale. Instead
of the government defining what is and is not considered
sexually acceptable, it's a corporation. Hot Money is a production
(38:54):
of The Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It was written
or reported by me Patrician Elson and me Alex Barker.
Peter Sale is our lead producer and sound designer. Edith
Russolo is our associate producer. Our editor is Karen Shakurji.
Amanda Kwong is our engineer. Music composition by Pascal Wise,
(39:16):
fact checking by Andrea Lopez Kusado. Our executive producers are
Cheryl Brumley and Jacob Goldstein. Special thanks to Renee Kaplan
and Ruler Kalov at The Financial Times and Mia Lobel,
Lital Molad, Justine Lang, Julia Barton and Jacob Weisberg at
Pushkin Industries. Thank you to a similar Web for providing
(39:38):
our web traffic data. If you want more from the ft,
try our new app featuring eight essential stories every weekday
search ft Edit in the iPhone app Store. Your first
month is free, and it's ninety nine cents a month
for six months after that.
Pushkin before we start a warning. Our investigation looks into
power and the porn industry. This episode contains adult themes.
In previous episodes, we've told you about men at the
(00:36):
top of porn, their ambition, their power battles, their relentless
efforts to remain unknown to the world. We looked at
how they cornered the most lucrative parts of the adult business,
either by owning tech platforms or production studios or both.
(00:57):
Porn profits flowed to owners and middlemen, but not so
much to performers. Now we're going to tell you about
the company that reset the ballot, the company that, whether
it intended to or not, managed to shift money and
power back to performers in a huge way. You may
(01:20):
have heard its name. He became so popular during the pandemic.
Even my mother had heard its name. We're talking about
Only Fans. Only Fans as a social media platform just
like those you use already, but which allows you to
set a monthly subscription price, ensuring that any media you
upload is fully hidden until your fans pay your subscription.
(01:44):
We are not the average demographic. We are on the
more mature sides of your typical webcam broadcaster, This is Peppermint.
It's the stage name she uses for the adult enterprise
she runs with her husband, Dusty, also a stage name.
Our shows can run anywhere between four to eight hours
(02:06):
eight hours time. All of that is sexual engagement. We
have amazing conversations with our viewers. We like to dive
deep into the meaning of life and relationships and sexuality.
We met at a pawn event in la where Dusty
and Peppermint were promoting their business and meeting fans. They're
(02:27):
mainly known for their live video work on campsites those
a tower shows that can include sex, fire, spinning, acrobatic yoga,
and cooking, trying to promote real sex between real people
rather than a fantasy scenario created by a studio. Over time,
(02:48):
they've branched out selling clips on video platforms and reaching
their most loyal supporters through an only Fans account. So
with the explosion of people turning to only Fans, turning
to content creation, turning to online work, I think there
is a lot more acceptance of it in the mainstream audience.
(03:08):
Only Fans is a platform that launched in twenty sixteen.
It's basically a special kind of social media site. It
lets you message followers or upload videos or posts, just
like Instagram or Facebook. The twist with only Fans is
that your content lives behind a paywall. Visitors pay you
(03:30):
to view it. They can even pay you to produce
media just for them. This seemingly small difference the paywall
changed how a whole generation of online stars earned their living. Influencers, musicians,
fitness instructors, but especially porn stars. Only Fans made the
(03:51):
industry's most famous performers seriously rich. Some have earned millions
and allowed them to make videos at home on their
own terms. Most Only Fans creators are and big stars,
but more like Peppermint and Dusty, the PM has allowed
them to generate a modest study income. It made it
(04:14):
easier than ever to make money from porn until the
moment Only Fans announced that porn wouldn't be welcome anymore.
Can you tell us about the day that Only Fans
banned porn? We had actually been on a trip up
to the mountains, and we had gone just to a
different locations so we could shoot some new content specifically
(04:38):
for only Fans. I opened up the app on my
phone and I see Twitter, and I see all these
posts about only fans banning porn. So I remember driving
down the mountains seeing our follower account just drop literally
in half, which means we also lost half of our income.
(04:58):
I think that these rules and these changes almost affect
the smaller creators more so. The platform that totally transformed
the pawn industry decided to ban pawn to become a
safe for work service. Then just one week later, Only
Fans changed its mind. Pawn was okay again. They canceled
(05:20):
the cancelation. It was so farcical. Only Fans made headlines
around the world. And what about them when they reversed
the band? How did you feel them? You always kind
of sit there and wonder when it's going to happen again,
and you know what's going to be the next trigger.
Why are they going to do it this time? What happened?
(05:46):
We decided to seek out only fans and where it
came from a close knit family from Essex, the New
Jersey of England. They're the most miscast porn barons you
can imagine, and yet they somehow confirmed power and porn
is all about the payments. I'm Alex Barker, I'm Patrician
(06:10):
Nelson from Pushkin Industries. And the Financial Times. This is
hot Money, Act one financial domination. We set out to
(06:53):
follow Only Fans to its source and it brought us
to a big gated house on the south coast of England,
the home of Danny Harwood. Danny was the very first
creator to join Only Fans when it launched. Hi everyone,
my name's Danny. Welcome to my Only Fans page. Come
(07:13):
enjoy me have a little chat. Can I see all
my sexy selfies? And let's have some fun boys. But
before we get to that part of the story, we
have to tell you how she first met Tim Stokely,
the mind behind Only Fans. It all started about twelve
(07:35):
years ago. Danny was in her late twenties making her
living as a glamor model and one day a man
called Tim walked into her life with a mad cat
plan to transform her into goddess Danielle. So can you
tell us when and where you first met him? He
(07:57):
contacted me for a photo shoet, having seen me on TV,
and he turned up in a all roy suit with
a briefcase and a copy of The Financial Times under
his arm. It was just a bit who is this guy?
(08:20):
Tim was carrying a Financial Times because his father was
a banker. His brother was a banker, and Tim may
have become a banker too if he didn't have other
interests he wanted to pursue. He was starting a new business,
a fetish side called glam Worship. He sort of looked
(08:41):
like he was just about to go for a board meeting,
not a photo shoot. That he was young, a fairly
good looking guy, and just very smart and very well spoken.
And he's like, right, okay, Danny, and if you just
like just sit over there, and he's like, just look
(09:02):
at the camera. He was so wonder prepared. He was
so nervous. This was Tim's first shoot for glam Worship.
Danny was the first model. He used his briefcase as
a camera stand. And here's the extraordinary part. The origins
of Only Fans can be traced straight back to the
(09:23):
kink the website served this fetish for financial domination. Out
of the photoshoot would emerge Goddess Danielle her Page told
visitors it was the luckiest day of their pathetic existence.
Girls would talk about financially dominating men. That's what the
(09:46):
fetish was. So the woman is in charge and therefore
they should give their money to the woman, and because
they're not worthy of that money. Financial domination, the art
of the finndom is not something we have made up
for a Financial Times podcast about money and porn. We promise, Hello, slaves, Well,
(10:11):
you've probably been watching me for quite a while now,
haven't you seeing me grow from strength to strengths? By now?
I have lots of loyal little followers, lots of loyal submissives.
Some people will literally pay for the thrill of becoming
(10:34):
a financial slave. Tim was gripped scenarios for Danny to
perform to her fans or pay pets. Danny's financial slaves
never actually handed over all their money even if they
wanted to. They probably couldn't. The tech was still clunky,
almost hacked together. Danny's pay pets could buy her stuff
(10:57):
from an Amazon wish list or send checks to a
numbered postbox. But the pay pets could never get Goddess
Danielle's personal attention. They couldn't ask for her custom videos
or directly fill her bank account with money. The flaws
were obvious. Tim launched other ventures, hoping to solve them.
(11:21):
Many other ventures, and after some painful trial and error,
in twenty sixteen, something new came together a sight then
actually worked Only Fans a platform that combined interaction, tailor
made content, and a direct connection between the fan and
(11:42):
the performer, including yes payment, with only Fans taking a
twenty percent cut. Danny was one of the first to
hear Tim's idea, It's like, so people can tip you
on that. I was like, what, they can tip you?
It's like yeah, I was like, okay, that's a game changer.
(12:03):
This was the start of a new era. If video
streaming made pawn three, Only Fans was one of the
sites that began to turn the tide. People were paying
for pawn again, actually getting their credit cards out, and
not just to pay pornographers, a studio or a website owner.
(12:25):
They were paying the performers direct. It was a slow start,
but as new features were introduced, partly on Danny's advice,
the money started rolling in through Only Fans. Danny found
a way to tap her Instagram and Twitter. Following I
went from earning one month between three and six thousand dollars.
(12:48):
My next earnings was twenty two thousand. Tim asked Danny
to spread the word, so she spoke with friends at
the Glamor TV channel where she performed Girls as this website,
you have to join it. You look at my bank statement.
To look at the statement. This is what I'm being paid,
this is what you could earn. They're like, wow, so
(13:08):
quickly find them up. Danny told us that performers started
leaving because they were earning so much money from their
only Fans accounts and keeping most of it going into
the changing room. One day and my boss had put
these posters up in the changing room walled saying that
you're not allowed to film any content for only fans,
(13:29):
otherwise you're going to get the sack. They hated it.
Danny says she eventually became the first to have a
million dollar page to her and for many established performers,
the control only Fans provided was a sort of liberation.
It gave them freedom and the power that comes with money.
(13:52):
They were being paid well enough to have leverage in
the industry, something that in an age of free porm
was sorely lacking. Today, Danny is still on the platform,
not as God as Danielle, but under another name. She
crowned herself to the Queen of Only Fans. After all
(14:15):
these years, she is still friends with the Stokely family,
and that's who we spoke with next. That's after the
break act two, The Stokelease. We hopped in a car
(14:39):
with our producer Pete Sale and headed to bishop Stortford,
a rural commuter town to the northeast of London. It's
near the home of the Stokelease, but not a typical
spot for a company headquarters, which I should Where are
we going and why? I don't even know how to
pronounce it. The Bishop's destroyed great staff podcasts already. We're
(15:07):
in the car. We're on our way to meet up
with Tim and guys Stokely. We are walking past the
only Fans headquarters, which are in a converted barn called
Fish Barn. It looks like the south of Sweden, but
(15:29):
we're just next to us are a couple of grain silos.
It feels pretty rural. There's a thatched roof over there.
Who's not why you expect businesses not make me think
adult content. We were greeted by the founder, Tim Stokely
and taken to a conference room overlooking a pond. My
first podcast. Yeah yeah. Tim doesn't often do recorded interviews.
(15:54):
He has a bit of a playboy image in the press.
His instagram is full of glam shots of Abitha and
sharp cut suits, but when we met him, that's not
how he came across at all. He was almost shy,
hardly the guide that was once called the King of
homemade porn. He first ended up in the adult industry
(16:16):
in part because the financial crash hit the job market
in the city of London. Since he couldn't follow his
father and brother into banking, he tried something else, starting
internet businesses from scratch. Lots of his ideas failed miserably,
but the ones in the adult business pointed him in
the right direction. A lot of the models we were
(16:39):
working with were getting inundated with private requests asking to
produce these tailored custom videos. The seed of Only Fans
was planted when Only Fans launched. It was intended to
be for everyone. There was no homepage with porn stars,
no search function to find them. There still isn't. It
(17:02):
was really designed to be an add on service for
the social media profiles that people already had. It allowed
them to monetize their online following, but the creators, musicians,
or influencers or fitness instructors had to bring their own
fan base with them, and the first ones to do
(17:23):
it were the porn stars. I think the adult industry
is typically ahead of the curve when it comes to
new tech, and I think content behind a payball model
really really suited. How did you raise the money for it?
That was my father, Guy, Guy Stokely is a former
(17:43):
merchant banker. If Tim is an unlikely pornographer, Guy is
a complete fish out of water. Before only fans Guy
was retired. He's mild mannered and ever so polite. Tim
phone me and said, I've got this really good idea, Dad,
and I kind of explained that the premise of paid
(18:05):
social media, and he told me about it, and I said, yeah,
that's interesting. Picture that thought bubble coming from Guy's head.
Oh god, not again. There was a healthy amount of skepticism.
Guid invested in some of the previous platforms. Some have
gone really well, some really badly. After many attempts that
(18:29):
to convince him, I remember Guy saying, okay, okay, but
this is the last one. The early days for Tim
were a hard slog. He sent hundreds of emails to
performers and influencers trying to explain how much money they
could make on Only Fans. I remember receiving one email
(18:49):
from one influencer saying, this is hands down the most
stupid business idea I've ever heard in my life. Only
Fans launched in twenty sixteen. One thing that really put
the wind in its sails was a clever referral program
giving creators a cut of other people's earnings if they
brought to the platform. Guy thought Tim's goal of half
(19:12):
a million pounds revenue in twenty seventeen was totally ridiculous.
They ended up with two point four million pounds. A
lot of the creators were adult performers and sitting with
the stoke. Please, that's something you can easily forget. They
don't seem like pawn. People mentioned nudity, and Guy almost
(19:35):
starts to blush. I didn't think of it as being adult.
I wasn't interested in adult, but it was about sporting. Tim.
This was genuinely a family business. Tim was CEO and guide,
the chief financial officer and supportive father. Tim's sister and
his two brothers were involved. Two. But then in twenty eighteen,
(19:58):
at a point when only Fans was growing fast and
showing it had real potential, the Stoke please did something surprising.
They decided it was time to bring in an outside
of fester. They sold only Fans but stayed on as
the executive team. Within a year of selling, their platform
just exploded in popularity. Only Fans is massively a part
(20:22):
of the pop cultures. Igeist right now, Cardibi's on the platform,
Chris Brown, Now, why are you tipping this? Rich man?
I think I'm gonna start a holy fans Please do it?
Lonny Love, Michael B. Jordan's mustache. Beyonce even name dropped
only fans in a song if she might start at
(20:42):
only fans. During the pandemic, it reached two million creators
and one hundred and eighty million users, A significant proportion
of them were buying or selling pawn. Only Fans gave
the tired old pawn industry a new lease of life,
and everything on the site was behind a paywall, so
(21:04):
much harder for children to access. But with the success
came a lot of bad press for Tim. There were,
of course stereotypes about the bling essex man making millions
from pawn, but also unease over only fans, normalizing pornography,
making it seem just like any other career a lot
(21:28):
of men and women saw the huge payout to top
porn stars and thought, I can give this a try.
But most couldn't build a big enough following, and some
probably realized porn wasn't something you can just dabble in
and regretted trying anyway. It's fair to say Only Fans
(21:49):
really caught a cultural moment and courted plenty of controversy.
We of course focused on the business side and the money.
What you need to understand is what makes Only Fans different.
It succeeded not just because it could take money, but
because it could pay it out. It built a financial
(22:11):
bridge from fans credit cards straight to the bank accounts
of creators. The bigger Only Fans became, the more its
reputation was associated with a pawn revival, and the more
nervous banks got moving its money around the world. So
nervous one bank even stopped providing a personal bank account
(22:33):
to Tim's brother, a former banker, just because he was
involved in running Only Fans. It's a very strange way
to act, but it was, you know. That's what happened. Then,
in the summer of twenty twenty one, the dam burst
Only Fans. The platform that changed the adult industry announced
(22:54):
it was going to ban pawn Performers were totally stunned.
Only fans will prohibit the posting of any content containing
sexually explicit kind act. That leaves a lot of people
worried about what's going to happen into the At least
tens of thousands of creators on the platform, who, particularly
during the pandemic, have made a lot of money from
(23:17):
the safety of their haunts. Hiss, think back to the
decision to ban explicit content, and yeah, what were you
trying to achieve when you first made that announcement. Well,
it certainly wasn't a strategic move really, Yeah, absolutely, Here,
we have to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars
(23:42):
to creators globally each month. You know, when you have
to move that amount of money, you depend upon large
investment banks, and we were seeing an increasing amount of
wires being flagged, with some investment banks citing things like
reputational risk. The precise trigger of their decision remains unclear. Here,
(24:03):
Tim is describing the choice as a practical matter. His
company's transfers were being flagged, marked down for extra checks
by banks moving their money around the world. A lot
of banks don't want to be associated with porn. The
abrupt announcement completely through the industry. The uproar from performers
(24:26):
was deafening. Big stars or less well known performers like
Peppermint and Dusty. They relied on only fans for their livelihoods,
and they were furious. And after a week of mayhem,
only Fans reversed its decision. Porn went from banned too
okay again all inside seven days. People who earn money
(24:50):
on the website only fans may have a bad case
of whiplash tonight, what a walk back. I guess The
question is has the damage already been done? Some users
really saw this as a move of only fans selling out.
Only Fans said its original decision to ban porn was
due to pressure from banking and payment services, but now
it has secured assurances necessary to keep things as is.
(25:14):
To everyone watching, the handling looked totally botched. It was
mocked on social media and compared to Domino's trying to
ban Peter. The lack of any convincing explanation at the
time also fed all sorts of conspiracy theories. Tim actually
insists the reversal was enabled by an interview he did
(25:36):
with me over the phone last year. It was for
a piece in the Financial Times that brands straight after
the ban, where he named some of the banks causing
only fans problems. After that article was published, he said
the mood changed, the banks gave him the assurances he needed.
Do you have regrets on how you handled it? Looking back?
(26:03):
Not on how it was handled. I don't think we
had much of a choice, but I deeply regret amount
of concern an anxiety it caused. I mean for a
lot of people it was it's like being cut down
at the knees and why should they trust any fans
not to do this again? And well, I you know,
(26:24):
I think what this, what this put a spotlight on,
was the discriminatory policies within the banking system, and that's
where the focus is. I think Tim here is talking
about banks making life difficult for companies just because they're
associated with adult content. The problem isn't necessarily allowing pawn
(26:48):
on a platform. Twitter, for instance, permits adult content on
parts of its platform and hosts lots of pawn without
much trouble. The issue start when a company has so
much pawn or makes so much money from pawn it
starts to look like a pawn company. After that, basic
(27:10):
finance dries up, banking becomes harder and a lot more expensive.
There are lots of people in the pawn industry who
find it hard to believe that only fans got cold
feet for a mundane reason like financing. They are still
convinced the whole pawn band fiasco was actually a publicity stunt,
(27:32):
some cunning plan that's that's entirely false. I think we've
perhaps been victim to some you know, unfair reporting, which
you know it has led to some criticism that is
based on moral outrage rather than evidence or facts or statistics.
Couldn't you have had that conversation with your financial partners before,
(27:56):
you know, if they were all happy? Couldn't you have
gone to your financial partners? I said, we could we
have handled it in a different way. Years of course
we could. Um, but um, We're happy where we ended. Huh.
At the end of our interviews, the Stoke Please took
us to their office. In there was another brother wearing
(28:20):
a wooly jumper that looked like an early Christmas present.
There were ducks wandering around a patio, crooked trinkets on
the desks. It seemed just a setting for a charming
family business. But for only fans. Something didn't quite seem right,
and it wasn't. We'll be right back Act three, reading
(28:50):
the fine print. Within three weeks of us visiting, the
Stoke Please had left only fans. Tim stepped down as
chief executive and guy and the rest of the family followed.
Just like that, the Stoke Please had gone. We'll admit it.
We were confused. We called them to ask what happened.
(29:12):
We didn't get much of an answer. Now, the story
of the Stoke These and only fans that you heard earlier,
that was all true, the family business, the way only
fans democratized porn. But we later learned that was only
one side of the story. Like looking at a movie
sets from a single camera. It didn't explain why the
(29:35):
Stokelees left only fans, or that crazy hokey cokey over
banning porn, or why they sold their company when it
was doing so well in twenty eighteen. To figure out
what was going on, we need to rewind and look
out of shot, and that starts with the current owner,
(29:56):
the guy who bought only Fans from the Stoke Lease
in twenty eighteen. Now, plenty of investors have attempted to
buy only Fans over the years, mainstream investors. But when
the Stoke Lease sold, it was to a man called
Leo Radvinski, a forty year old Ukrainian American who made
(30:17):
his fortune in the pawn industry. We'd love to have
spoken to him, but he declined he's not one for publicity.
Here's what Tim told us about Leo when we visited.
You know, he's been absolutely joy to work with and
such a smart guy, and there's a huge reason we
(30:38):
are where we are. Remember, in twenty eighteen, Only Fans
was a fast growing business, but it hadn't really caught fire.
The good times were ahead. So why did the Stoke
Lease give it all up to Leo Radvinski. Tim was
kg with his reasons for selling only Fans, but he
(31:02):
did give us a few clues. I mean, what I
can tell you is it's one of the best decisions
we made. It's very kind of hands on and adds
so much value to the technical part of the business.
And then he also works to an extent on the
payments side. We didn't think much of it at a
time Leo os tech. He made his career running a
(31:27):
live video porn side called my Free Camps. But when
we listened back, we realized the intriguing part was the
second half of that sentence. Tim said. Leo also worked
on the payment side, which raises one blindingly obvious question.
Why was Leo, the seasoned pornographer, helping a family of
(31:50):
bankers with payments? So you know, I've been looking for
an explanation of why the Stokely's sold Only Fans. I
think I found something, But I have a little confession
to make. Yeah, it was that. One of my new
(32:13):
habits is reading the terms and conditions on porn sites.
The legal fine print. Well, you've sent me one. Should
I read it out loud? Go ahead? So it says
you may not create, upload, post, display, or distribute user
content that is sexually explicit. It doesn't sound like a
(32:34):
porn site, right, No. Well those are the original terms
and conditions for only Fans from twenty sixteen, So no,
porn Only Fans didn't allow explicit content from the start,
nothing exactly, and it more or less stayed that way
for a year and a half. After Only Fans launched
(32:55):
even though there was lots of pawn on the site.
I mean, this really transformed how I understood the whole
Only Fans venture. It may well have been crucial to
the entire business model. Was claiming to be palm free,
and if you don't have palm, you don't have payment trouble.
(33:15):
The Stoke Please could benefit from easier, cheaper payment processing
they'd get like any mainstream platform. Well that's a big
advantage in the porn business. I mean, Only Fans stood
out when it launched because it only took a twenty
percent cut of a performer's earnings, when most campsites take
(33:37):
an average of fifty percent or more. So one of
the reasons they could offer that was cheaper payment processing.
And so the Stoke Please just sidestepped higher costs by
denying there was any porn on the site exactly. It's amazing.
So when did they admit that there was born on
(33:59):
the side. In the spring of twenty eighteen, and that's
when the Stoke Please introduced a new adult payment processor,
a different financial service men to handle all the explicit accounts,
presumably a much more expensive payment processor. And people in
the industry told me the only fans. Around this time
(34:21):
began to struggle with payments in particular, and within six months, Hey,
Presto the Stoke please had sold only fans. And remember
Leo is known in the pawn business as a master
of payments. You had to be to run at pawn camsite.
I mean, there's lots of micropayments. It's just in the
(34:43):
nature of the business. And suddenly you think of all that,
everything that Tim said about selling to Leo just made
a lot more sense when the payments side got more
difficult they had to turn to an expert. What I
can tell you is it's one of the best decisions
we made. It's not much value in speculating where we'd
(35:03):
be if we hadn't done it. We'd love to ask
Leo how he does it, how he his bangs and
payment processors on side, But like most of Pawn's biggest
money makers, he's not the time to give interviews. Neither
would his new management team, who are usually very media friendly.
(35:24):
The reason is partly Leo's vision for the company. He
came from the porn world, but he always saw the
mainstream potential of only fans. For him, that's only fans'
future fitness instructors and musicians, and that explains a lot.
When we talk to the Stokeleys about the decision to
(35:44):
ban Pawn last August, it never seemed like they really
believed in it. In reality, it was Leo's call to
him the mainstream promise of only fans was not worth
risking for Pawn, however much money it made. He has
visions of bringing in mainstream investors or even floating only
(36:06):
Fans on the stock market. Only Fans has promised not
to ditch porn performers again. People like Peppermint and her
husband Dusty, who we heard from earlier in this episode.
I mean, they say one thing and then a week
later they say another thing, and it makes one very
(36:26):
very hard to trust what's happening with the site itself.
When is this going to happen again? So it makes it,
you know, very precarious. Peppermint and Dusty stuck with only
Fans because it's an important stream of income and it
didn't seem right to be cutting off loyal subscribers. It's felt,
in some ways like going back to an abusive partner.
(36:48):
You know, you don't want to really stay there, but
you're kind of stuck. You don't have a lot of choice.
I'm hoping that it means only good things. You know,
maybe Tim Stokely was tired of having to deal with
the credit card companies and all the legislation and the rules,
So handing the reins over to somebody else could possibly
be a good thing. That's my hope. Indeed, there is
(37:11):
a weird parallel between all the people we've spoken to
and told you about in this episode, Peppermint and Dusty,
the Stokely family, and Leo Radvinski, the pornographer trying to
go mainstream. You could even make a link to Danny,
the goddess of financial domination, who had no way to
be tipped by her pay pets. What all their stories
(37:35):
taught us was this, if you're not the master of
your business's payment system, very simply means somebody else is
in charge. Only fans empowered performers by giving them away
to receive direct payments from fans. But because only fans
doesn't control its own payment system, it is caught in
(37:58):
a bind. It is reliant on pornshy payment companies on
one side to take in money, and on pornshy bangs
on the other to pay it out. That's where to
real power lies. A finance world that seems to have
a muddled and bizarre relationship with the porn industry and
the money it brings. What does this all mean for
(38:21):
porn today? That's our next episode, the season finale. Instead
of the government defining what is and is not considered
sexually acceptable, it's a corporation. Hot Money is a production
(38:54):
of The Financial Times and Pushkin Industries. It was written
or reported by me Patrician Elson and me Alex Barker.
Peter Sale is our lead producer and sound designer. Edith
Russolo is our associate producer. Our editor is Karen Shakurji.
Amanda Kwong is our engineer. Music composition by Pascal Wise,
(39:16):
fact checking by Andrea Lopez Kusado. Our executive producers are
Cheryl Brumley and Jacob Goldstein. Special thanks to Renee Kaplan
and Ruler Kalov at The Financial Times and Mia Lobel,
Lital Molad, Justine Lang, Julia Barton and Jacob Weisberg at
Pushkin Industries. Thank you to a similar Web for providing
(39:38):
our web traffic data. If you want more from the ft,
try our new app featuring eight essential stories every weekday
search ft Edit in the iPhone app Store. Your first
month is free, and it's ninety nine cents a month
for six months after that.
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