So this is to protect all the victims on OnlyFans, for example.
You'll be allowed to subscribe to them alright, but it will not be legal for a service provider to offer Swedes the ability to purchase custom content from them. Which is of course the _actual_ income stream from sex workers on OnlyFans.
So that means Swedish sex workers can't raise a full income on OnlyFans anymore. In fact, OnlyFans has already disabled the DM system for all Swedish creators.
Now, will this law care for where they have to go then? No, of course not. The law stops caring about them as soon as they've been thrown under the bus.
I can understand the reasoning, but it's just halfway there. I think a more complete line of thought WOULD have raised the issue that these workers don't show themselves naked on OnlyFans just for fun, like instead of working in retail or in a comfy office gig. OnlyFans is not typically a first choice. In that sense, the Swedish law follows. Most there are probably "victims". BUT here's the deal; they're _victims of society_. They obviously need the cash for some particular reason and this way somehow works out for them better than others even if it means exposing themselves. And now this unusually safe haven (in these circles) that is OnlyFans where they are distanced from their buyers, even anonymized, is taken away from them. The platform where THEY dictated how far they'd want to go.
Now they need to seek out shadier platforms. Shadier outlets. Apartments? Or maybe just do more drugs to dull their anxiety over not being able to provide for their kids or whatever.
I'm sorry but I can't see much good come out of this.
Yeah, this is what I don't quite understand. I've read https://jamstalldhetsmyndigheten.se/aktuellt/nyheter/starkt-... to try to understand the perspective of the people who are driving this change, and I think this seems to be the core:
> The development of online platforms has meant that the purchase of sex increasingly takes place without physical contact. This shift does not change the fundamental problem: that a person, often in a vulnerable situation, is coerced into participating in a sexual act in exchange for payment. The imbalance of power between the buyer and the person coerced into the act remains regardless of whether the act takes place in a physical space or in front of a camera.
> Sexual crimes that take place digitally can have consequences as serious as physical assaults. The violation that occurs when someone is coerced to participate in a sexual act for payment affects the privacy, self-determination and mental health of the individual, regardless of the format.
I still don't quite agree that the situations and activities are the same, and this move seems to make it inherently more dangerous for sex workers rather than the opposite. I guess ultimately the Sweden government (as always) think they can outlaw things and that will make those things go away because it's illegal, which I always fundamentally disagreed with, which is made clear by this:
> It is hoped that the change in the law will not only reduce demand, but also help raise awareness of the vulnerability that may lie behind online prostitution. [...] it should not be allowed to buy access to another person's body, either physically or digitally.
They act like they've discovered capitalism. It's not a bad argument, it's just not an argument against sex work. It's a disingenuous attempt to disguise misogynistic views of women as something noble.
That's because they're eliding the common knowledge that the activities in this particular industry are meant to be special and locked away behind formal ceremonies, rather than openly available in public commerce.
On the other hand, I can imagine there's a certain market for people speaking the same language as you, and by forcing Swedish models to go international they are now competing with models from every other country.
Yes, it is true that the pimps and human traffickers are the real criminals, and that the vast majority of prostitutes are in fact victims. And yes, it's a good thing not to prosecute them. But when you make buying illegal, you force prostitutes away from the safety nets that could help them anyway. If you're the police, how do you catch johns? Follow the prostitutes, of course. So they're forced to avoid the police, lest they're unable to meet demands from their pimps, and get punished, often violently. And in avoiding the police, they also become more vulnerable to abuse by johns.
The real world just doesn't work like this. You can't nearly separate these things into legal/not legal bins. They're entangled and can't be unentangled merely by way of ideology or wishful thinking.
The other issue is of course, is it wrong to buy sex? If you're a sex-negative feminist, the answer is yes, because your ideology rests on projecting your own sex-negative outlook onto all women, which to me seems hilariously and ironically sexist. Personally I believe women have very diverse attitutes to sex and should have autonomy to do whatever the hell they please with their lives and bodies.
To me, the only thing that really matters if whether the sex is consensual, without clear-cut coercion. Is it wrong to buy sex from someone who is clearly a victim of human trafficking? Absolutely, I think so. This is basically slavery.
Is it wrong to buy sex from someone who's selling it, because it's their only option? This one is trickier, but I think it's about as wrong as getting your iphone screen fixed by someone who couldn't cut it in "real" IT work. Or getting your garbage picked up by someone whose only marketable skill is emptying a bin into a truck. Society is full of people doing jobs they hate because it's all they got. And that sucks, but criminalising their customers doesn't seem like a reasonable solution. It's a systemic issue.
Is it wrong to buy sex work from someone who does it because they genuinely love it(yes, they do exist, though they are awfully rare)? How the hell could it be?
So in summation, it seems to me human trafficking is the real problem. Criminalising johns seems like a stupid way to tackle it, and it demonstrably does not work. Extending it to the online sphere makes even less sense.
> I think it's about as wrong as getting your iphone screen fixed by someone who couldn't cut it in "real" IT work. Or getting your garbage picked up by someone whose only marketable skill is emptying a bin into a truck. Society is full of people doing jobs they hate because it's all they got.
Selling sex for money is not in the same bin as other jobs people hate. Sex is an intimate act for humans, like it or not, and being coerced into sex, whether physically or economically, is especially toxic. Like long-term PTSD toxic.
This is not the same as cleaning latrines or collecting garbage (which yes, can be a foul work experience). Although as I'm thinking about it, there are other jobs which have a similar soul-toxicity as sex work, like industrial animal slaughter or mass executioner (e.g. in a concentration camp). Jobs that require you to give up your humanity in exchange for a paycheck.
I have content with X, Y, Z properties, someone bids to buy that. or the reverse, There's lots of demand for X, Y, Z content, I'll produce it.
If influencing the generation of content is illegal, is it now illegal to look at consumption states in order to decide what to produce?
I agree, but the background of the law is because any sex worker is seen as a victim that should be protected, rather than that the law is changed to improve things for men. Maybe an indirect side-effect of the law would be to change the behavior of these men stuck in that, but judging by history I doubt it'll change many's mind.
Just imagine if they regulated labor in other industries this way. Employer-employee power imbalance is immense.
Furthermore, in Nordic countries, minimum wage and such are not government-mandated, but maintained by collective bargaining agreements negotiated by powerful unions. In Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and also Italy, there is no legally defined minimum wage.
For some, food is like drugs: it overrides their self-control system and they become addicts. How do you make a law in that situation? Or is investing in Novo Nordisk across the North Sea good enough?
In the US, "resorting" to something to make money is Plan A, B and C.
The idea of “resorting to OnlyFans” to support yourself is a myth, regardless of the country.
OnlyFans isn’t a platform where anyone can sign up and start making a lot of money. The median creator maxes out at a little over a thousand dollars in a year from what I recall.
Only a very few creators collect a lot of money. It’s similar to other social platforms where the majority of content creators get very little interaction.
So this idea that people are “resorting to OnlyFans” to support themselves isn’t supported by the realities of the data and the payouts.
Do you think it is possible to create a society where people don't need something like OF to supplement their income.
Obviously, I would prefer to live in a society where no one needs to do work that does not align with their moral or ethical beliefs. Though I have never heard of such a society.
If people are only doing it because they can't make money elsewhere, maybe fix that problem instead of taking their only income away from them.
If Swedish buyers are mostly buying from foreign sellers, I don’t see how the Swedish social safety net protects sellers.
The irony, of course, is that the only thing they're a "victim" of is those same politicians.
"neither harmful", tells me you know nothing about the subject.
Also while you might have a point in principle it has quite little to do with random chance like in the Russian Roulette example.
Also when it comes to the Nordic countries it’s rather hypothetical, considering that they (+Estonia) have one of the highest rates of drug overdose related deaths in the EU. Surely they would have adopted different policies on that already if their goal was protecting the most vulnerable rather than puritanical moralism?
As galling as this is to American software developers, in this case it's the elected Swedish government
Or perhaps you're saying that specifically because it ranks high on the list of most dangerous professions, that it should be outlawed? In that case I hope you're ready to outlaw (again) logging, fishing, roofing, aircraft piloting, derrick operators and more. I hope you've also considered that the reason it's dangerous in the first place is because of the criminalization and lack of regulations governing sex work.
Or perhaps you just think that people are being pressured into doing sex work by their families, and therefore we should throw out the entire profession? In that case we need to be throwing out doctors, lawyers, and engineers.
I'd appreciate some clarification on what exactly the argument is.
Most of the jobs you list are FAR safer then prostitution. But yes I would argue there are lots of other jobs that i would outlaw for the same reason. Like Bumfighting, a lot of dodgy construction, self harm, jobs without proper safety equipment, gladiators, and a lot of military recruitment. You are exploiting, or are very likely to be exploiting people in dire situations.
However, that doesn't mean it has to be that way. My personal belief is that it should be treated a similar way to alcohol:
- there are only specific, licensed places where you can get it
- you must be over a certain age
- you cannot enjoy it in public
- establishments have a right to refuse service if you seem intoxicated or belligerent
Plus, adding on security to check for weapons and intervene in the rare case of violence.
In my opinion, if you combine all those regulations, sex work would be more than safe enough for it to not be considered a "dangerous" profession.
You list things that regulated to protect the user of drugs, tobacco and alcohol, but with prostitution, the product is a human being that needs to be protected too.
The Nordic model, does not outlaw selling sex, but criminalizes buying. In my opinion, selling sex may be harmfull, but i see no ethical reason against it. However there is no ethical way to buy sex, because its impossible for a buyer to be sure that you are not causing serious harm to the person you are buying from.
I'm sure there are 18 year old men who enjoy working in coal mines, too.
Actually, I think that premise was part of Trump's election campaign, so at least on the other side of the Atlantic that sentiment seems to work out.
The initial ban in Sweden was itself legislated in 1999 when the Riksdag became majority women.
The libertarian and market-driven framing is a uniquely American and Canadian lens that doesn't hold much water in much of Europe - especially highly collectivist and monocultural societies like much of Scandinavia. It's the same with attitudes around drug legalization (zero-tolerance but with a heavy rehabilitation tilt is the mainstream view in much of Europe).
[0] - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13545701.2010.54...
[1] - https://feminismandhumanrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/0...
[2] - https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/feministsatlaw/article...
I wouldn't underestimate that market. While men seem to consume more porn, "men" also includes "gay men" of course, who won't be quite as interested in seeing naked women even if we pretend women aren't interested in sex.
Plus, women may only be about a half as interested in pornography as men (according to https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2024-year-in-review 38% of visitors were female), the market sure seems large enough.
There are definitely market differences (the pay gap for male actors, for instance, and of course the double standard that judges women more than men for consuming such content) but the divide is not even close to absolute.
Your post ("it is extremely unlikely that someone in the sex industry is Swedish/Norwegian/Icelandic/Danish given the mixture of social bias and social safety net") supposes that women go into the sex industry out of desperation, but that's not true. Some people are fine with selling their bodies, to various degrees, and don't have a problem making an income that way.
u/Jug below in the thread has a more comprehensive and better written explanation.
That’s sort of like saying American politicians are too sheltered to understand people enjoy fentanyl
The sex industry is terrible for everyone involved; it's addictive, it ruins the lives of the girls and men who work in it, it spreads dangerous diseases, and it doesn't contribute to the advancement of our society. I can't imagine why anyone would support it except out of a sadomasochist curiosity.
I suspect (ironically) you may be too sheltered to understand why the sex industry is so harmful
And while OnlyFans can technically be used to sell any digital content, it is mostly selling (softcore) pornography, which is obviously sex work. Categorising it as "digital content" or "a private service" may work to skirt around the American laws that outright criminalise sex workers, but it's not fooling anyone.
Another point of note is that quite a few European countries struggle with human trafficking problems in the sex trade, even in countries where prostitution is completely legal. It's not like human traffickers haven't figured out that OnlyFans is an easy way to make money if they can manage enough accounts. There are also less obvious problems, like people who are strapped for cash and desperate, doing things they otherwise wouldn't and will later regret.
Personally, I think sex work should just be regulated like normal work and the Swedish approach ("Nordic model") is counterproductive. While I think online sex work should be treated the same as offline sex work, I think banning it is moving in the wrong direction. It's still not as bad as criminalising sex workers themselves, of course.
And “or operates a website that makes it easier to get in touch with adult content creators could be imprisoned for up to one year.”
diggan•8h ago
"Buying custom adult content became illegal in Sweden first of July 2025". It seems moderators may have gotten a bit too eager with improving the title :)
This is the official message/news from the government, but it's in Swedish only: https://www.regeringen.se/pressmeddelanden/2025/02/nya-lagfo...
Another perspective (also in Swedish) from the "Swedish Gender Equality Agency", which contains a bit more background on why the law was changed: https://jamstalldhetsmyndigheten.se/aktuellt/nyheter/starkt-...
dang•8h ago
It's always better to use representative language from the article itself, though, so I've used the first sentence of the article instead.
yupitsme123•8h ago
jampekka•7h ago
yupitsme123•6h ago
Tadpole9181•4h ago
A porn actress can look at a role, the type of content being made, and mull it over and compare to other gigs. A live streamer has a minute to decide if they'll do a weird request for rent money. There's a (at least perceived to be a) larger lever being used against their judgement than normal.
I've also heard livestream content has a higher prevalence of trafficking? Not sure how true that is, so take it with a grain of salt.
yupitsme123•4h ago
Still, from an American point of view this is interesting for several reasons. One, it seems somewhat prudish for the Swedes, who we often stereotype as being very liberal and sensible. Two, I can't imagine american lawmakers caring about or being able to pass legislation on such a niche issue.
numpad0•2m ago
diggan•7h ago
yupitsme123•6h ago
giantg2•7h ago
diggan•7h ago
I thought so at first too! But no, audio and text is excluded it seems, and only custom photos and custom videos are included in the law.