The owner of OnlyFans, a site known for its adult content that is credited with revolutionising the online porn industry, has died at the age of 43.
Leonid Radvinsky, who was born in Ukraine and grew up in Chicago, had purchased the company in 2018 from its two UK-based founders.
The site’s popularity surged during the Covid-19 pandemic, landing him on Forbes’ annual list of billionaires just three years later.
He “passed away peacefully after a long battle with cancer,” OnlyFans confirmed in a statement, which asked for privacy for his family.
More dead billionaires, please.
especially one that donated to AIPAC.
I didn’t know him, but apparently he financed the republicans. If that is indeed the case I say fuck this guy.
On the other hand the site took out the middleman/madam who traditionally exploited these women (perhaps man as well) So, good for them!
Edit: I’m an idiot, I’m sure the site took a fat percentage of the earnings, so technically they just replaced the pimps. And just like that my sympathy is gone…
They didn’t replace the pumps fully. Some manage accounts however if one party is trying to ban your platform then bribing them not to makes sense.
I mean taking a cut is pimpish but at least they aren’t getting beaten up and physically abused and getting STDs and whatnot.
It is a little better for them.
Thing is though legalized and well regulated full on prostitution would also be better than traditional pimps as well.
He certainly didn’t become a billionaire by charging them reasonable fees for the financial and computational infrastructure his company provided.
EDIT: Example of what I mean by how much OF has ruined mainstream social media.
I went on Facebook earlier this eve. I saw a video from Bentellect show up on my reels, a content creator with 17M total followers across all his socials. About 60% of his videos are him reacting to people’s online posts. The other 40% (the ones that the algorithms are actually promoting) are ones of him and his girlfriend in their underwear picking outfits out for each other and doing some silly fake catwalk poses on a treadmill. And of course, each of these videos begins with her strutting past the camera, full view of her huge panty-clad arse.
Check profile, click link to Instagram, oh look, a LinkMe URL, which takes me to a profile where about 90% of the page is taken up by links to their separate OnlyFans pages, and about 5% of the page has a few puny buttons linking to Ben’s Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch and X pages. And of course most of her videos are pay-to-view with some requring as much as a $100 tip.
This seems to be something he’s done ever since he started dating an ex-pornstar, which I assume was rather recently based on his post history.
I’m not exactly mourning this guy’s death. Not only because of his financial support for the US Republicans, but because OnlyFans has single-handedly ruined the online pornography and greater social media landscape.
You can’t go on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Tumblr, X, any dating app, or even Reddit anymore without seeing how much e-girls have astroturfed and spammed the absolute shit out of these platforms. And the way they get past content guidelines (which should’ve had them banhammered outside of Reddit) is with an allmylinks or linktree URL in their bio where half the links are trying to lull you into paying $20/month to see their nudes. Then you have models like Bonnie Blue who have genuinely gained infamy from doing it with over a thousand guys in a single day, in the kind of publicity stunt that has shown just how low the bar has fallen.
Amateur porn used to be about exhibitionism. Now it’s all shot with professional grade studio setups and you don’t get any kind of interaction or engagement unless you bankroll a model’s influencer lifestyle. We’ve genuinely commodified female interaction as a society and made bank off of findom. That I think is more damaging to society than the lack of ID & age verification checks on porn sites, and why I think the Dead Internet Theory held a lot of weight years before the rise and wide adoption of generative AI…
On top of that, it’s simply poor value for money. We rag on the television and film industries for the amount of competing streaming platforms they’ve created which have all-but-reversed the money consumers saved on cable packages, yet we simultaneously celebrate OF and its ability to let you subscribe to a single creator for twice the price as a Netflix-of-porn streaming service like Pornhub Premium or Xvideos Red. And it’s not as if porn isn’t freely available all over the internet…
he also funds AIPAC, so nobody shedding tears. OF puts the money back in the hands of the “OF” acct users. Porn industry, the studios control all the money, or have the ability blacklists actors they dont like.
Disagree. Some amateur porn was about exhibitionism but most of it was about money and that money was more often than not made by human slavers. I think onlyfans is a net good for this particular industry and the issues of “spam” and content moderation are entirely separate - it’s the platforms that promote this spam as horny users are spending more time and money on the platform.
Counterpoint: there is plenty of poorly shot amateur porn that’s free on pornhub. I’ve done some research.
they mostly been removed, and only “professional porn”, non-PH sites have largely captured most of the old videos.
A lot of it has disappeared because PH removed all videos that weren’t posted from verified accounts back in December 2020.
Yeah, xhamster is better than pornhub
dint xhamster captured most of the PH content before they sanitized it, plus some older OF content.
“Back in my days the women of porn were properly underpaid and fully exploited to do exactly what I wanted for way cheaper!”
I’m not mourning the death of a billionaire. And sure, the advertising of pornographic content could probably use a bit of regulation… Heck, that probably applies to advertising more broadly. But I’m not upset that sex workers today have alternatives to working with sketchy producers. I’d rather a #girlboss spam Facebook (which you shouldn’t be using in 2026 anyways) than a GirlsDoPorn situation.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. OnlyFans gives me findom or financial exploitation vibes.
I’d also say they don’t exactly have a squeaky-clean reputation either. CEASE have raised concerns about young women being exploited by their audience. They’ve also come under fire for their leniency towards accounts that repeatedly post illegal content.
Do not get me wrong, I’m not defending the seedy practices of the porn industry, especially with all the crap that went down with GirlsDoPorn. But if I can’t even meet with ladies on a dating app because I only see hordes of fake spam profiles marketing porn to me, then it’s a sign that social media has been truly enshittified with content that doesn’t even belong on a lot of these platforms.
When I refer to amateur stuff, I’m thinking more like the earlier days of Reddit’s seedy side. The only NSFW sub that I think explicity bans OF models due to wanting to uphold that exhibitionist spirit is r/gonewild.
All of your problems seem to be with things outside of OnlyFans.
It combines the sexual exploitation of mainstream porn with the economic exploitation of the gig economy
A quote directly from one of the articles you linked that I think hits the nail on the head. The problem is capitalism. The workers of OnlyFans are being exploited in the same way that Uber drivers are. Honestly, in a similar manner to how baristas and programmers and oil riggers and everyone else working under capitalism is. That’s why I’m not sad that this billionaire owner died.
The other problems you mention are problems on other platforms. It sounds like whatever dating app you are using has a problem with people using it to advertise their business- I think it’s the responsibility of the dating app to crack down on such misuse and give users a mechanism to report that.
If your Facebook feed is full of OF ads… Well first of all you should get off of Facebook because it’s terrible, but also Meta should crack down on what advertising they allow and how. Or maybe… You’re in the tiny minority if people who care?
Other platforms have tools to address similar issues. I always laugh when people complain about seeing adult content on Steam because that is turned off by default- you need to dig through your store preferences to allow that. The old LemmyNSFW instance had different communities- some allowed or even encouraged OF creators, while others banned them. That seemed to work well. I haven’t paid as much attention to FediNSFW and it’s probably still forming those sorts of structures, but I expect them to be there eventually.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect OnlyFans to have any sort of say in where and how creators advertise on other platforms. Such restriction wood be draconian.
$11 million donation to AIPAC. The world has lost nothing of value with his passing.
apart from a business leader making sex work safer and more profitable for sex workers
I think this may have been an unintended benefit
Agreed. Imagine being so shitty I cheered for cancer…
Imagine reaching the pinnacle of wealth and achievement only to have this happen.
And all your money won’t another minute buy. Dust in the wind.
And all your money won’t another minute buy.
Because all these billionaires would rather hoard money than pay taxes for cancer research, or get Trump elected, who killed all cancer research in 2025.
We should have service that sends cards to people on their deathbeds: “No cure, but you saved $11,000 in taxes”.
I have a feeling that many of them are not smarter than regular engineering department student
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Yeah. Money gets you the private cancer treatments. Or it gets you on the organ transplant list in all 50 states. Or pays for procedures overseas.
Sure, but I don’t think that long explanation would go very well in the middle of the song.
Didn’t magic Johnson throw money at his HIV to keep it from becoming AIDS?
He just took his HIV meds.
Asshole post bud.
He did a lot to raise both funding and awareness for hiv/aids research and absolutely benefited from the finest, most cutting edge treatment our healthcare system has possibly ever provided to anyone. That was available to him at the time and not the people his charities would eventually serve because of his massive fortune. Can you really not see the point dude was making? Didn’t say anything remotely judgmental about him either
Magic Johnson didn’t just throw money at his HIV to stop it from becoming AIDS. He has spent decades at throwing hundreds of millions at EVERYONE’S HIV to stop it from becoming AIDS by spending untold millions on HIV and AIDS research and advocacy, and convincing thousands and thousands of others over the last 35 years to do the same. Not to mention being one of HIV/AIDS research biggest public advocates worldwide. Lobbying dozens of governments to spend money on research, and lobbying government to treat those with HIV and AIDS with some shred of humanity, rather than pestilent cretins to be quarantined and killed, especially in Africa, where it was spreading like wildfire in the 90s.
And shame on you for ignoring that
Shame on you
SHAME!
And shame on you for using him as a cudgel for your ignorant, bigoted argument.
Edit: thank you for deleting your comment
Apologies if you somehow missed the larger context of my post. I’m not trying to specifically bash Magic Johnson for his efforts expanding awareness of and research into HIV/AIDS, I’m trying to make a point that money literally buys time in this world.
The comment I replied to is a line from a song simply stating “and all your money won’t another minute buy” and I pointed out an example of someone buying years of time with money.Regardless of the larger point you were trying to make, you didn’t have to run over magic Johnson and the multiple decades of worldwide HIV/AIDS advocacy, hundreds of millions of dollars, tens of thousands of hours of lectures and good works that he did with a freight train of bigoted ignorance.
So go fuck yourself with that freight train of bigotry, ignorance, entitlement and arrogance you rode in here with
Because unless you’re gonna delete your comment, I don’t wanna hear it
First of all, if I did delete my comment, how would other people have content to your outrage?
Second, Help me understand how giving an example of money buying health is bigotry, ignorance, entitlement, or arrogance.
At no point did I disparage Magic Johnson or say anything derogatory towards people with HIV/AIDS. Maybe I picked a bad example, sure. I’m highly confident that every single millionaire and billionaire has spent more on health care than the average person.Honestly you are making some of my point for me. Yes, tremendous effort went into normalizing a deadly disease that was previously demonized as only afflicting “the gays” and “junkies” … By spending massive amounts of money, work that could not have happened without financial backing “everyone” up to that point didn’t see a reason to expend.
Purely a philosophic question, Still no offense to Mr. Johnson, but would he have spent any of that time effort and money if he didn’t personally have HIV?
As I said in my private comment to you, I am happy to educate you on the history of the contributions that Magic Johnson made. I’m happy to educate you on the history of HIV and aids because of his contributions. I have absolutely no interest in engaging in your arguments.
If you’re interested in being educated, let me know.
And so this can be seen publicly: thank you for deleting your comment
Certainly better than dying before that - poor and sad.
I feel personally attacked.
Article doesn’t say when he was diagnosed or what sort of cancer but unless he’d been fighting it since before Covid he probably got to enjoy his success for at least a short bit of time
“long battle with cancer” should’ve been longer for him specifically
I’ll toss one off in his honor
But one of the first things I learned from the Internet in the 90s is that I will never ever have to pay for porn
Edit: ok, so I get that OnlyFans was more about the eSexWork part of the CumCalculus, but, still, not for me. No judgment, though. In fact, I had some friends that found it quite empowering.
It may sound weird, but the only person I follow on OnlyFans (and have paid for) is a friend of mine, someone I’ve hung out with in real life. She only did it because she was struggling to make enough money, even with a job!
It was a little weird, I guess, to see her boobs online and then go hang out at her house, but whatever.
Oh, also I guess I follow Markiplier who posted “tasteful nudes” and donated all the money to charity.
That is sweet as a kind kind of borderline “supporting a friend/boundary violation“. Without knowing more, I’m not entirely sure how to judge the situation?
Markplier… why does that sound familiar? I don’t think I want the answer to that.
Human sexuality is both complicated and complex to infinity. Unless it harms someone, I am in no place to be judgmental.
Markiplier is a YouTuber, he plays video games and it’s fun to watch him scream at horror games - like Five Nights at Freddy’s.
He also made a movie based off a video game called Iron Lung.
His “tasteful nudes” don’t actually show any nudity (except maybe his butt).
Ok, lol. It’s just some brain flotsam from something else. Lol that’s a relief ha ha ha ha ha ha
I don’t think that’s weird. I’ve seen friends and coworkers naked for various reasons. One of my good friends is someone I used to hook up with in college.
I had some friends that found it quite empowering.
What’s empowering about whoring yourself to the same people that are responsible for why everything is so expensive?
Brother I do that every day and I’m an accountant
Jesus Christ, every time sex work is mentioned it brings out the anti-sex work incels and freaks. At least you guys make it easy to figure out who to block.
That’s… Not how that works. And shaming people who have no shame over their own sexuality and bodies is exactly the problem here. I’m referring to sex work. Not billionaires.
Your (quite legitimate) problem with billionaires is only tangentially related.
If you wanna make a case that this particular billionaire was a bad guy, then submit your evidence. “Billionaires Bad!” is insufficient.
That is how it works for the vast majority of people.
Very, very few of them are “empowered” by their position.
I’m also not just talking about billionaires.
How typical. Shameful people pretending that their shame is everyone’s shame. Well let me tell you something, honey, it isn’t. Your shame is your shame. Other people don’t suffer your pain because it is your pain. And it’s your pain because you put it on yourself, asshole
I don’t wanna hear any more of your ignorance or any more of your excuses for your ignorance. It’s all bullshit.
And the only shame here should be for that: your ignorance
In psychology, they call it projection
Edit: and to be fair? You really shouldn’t be feeling that shame either. You should talk to someone and work it out. Love yourself so others can love you too.
It’s not my shame, but the shame of people who are forced into prostitution because of their socioeconomic standing.
I’ll be sure to let them know how you feel, though.
It’s not everyone else, honey, it’s you. Learn to love yourself. You’re worth it.
I promise ❤️
No, it’s the vast majority of them. The vast majority of people in prostitution feel no empowerment and in fact it’s the opposite; they’re ashamed of their position and would change it if they realistically could.
If you disagree, then you’re wrong. It really is that simple.
There is nothing empowering about whoring yourself out for money to the same people profiting off of your destitution.
It doesn’t matter how many people upvote you on the internet. You’re still wrong.
On the one hand…
…while on the other…
Can somebody tell me why people throwing up gang signs always look like they have the palsy?
At risk of repeating myself (just saw this above)
Sweet, NEXT
So he didn’t do any of the work for originally coming up with the idea or making the site, and then he also didn’t do any of the work in making the site’s popular content.
I do see there is some risk and some value in investing in a company, but it seems wrong that he became a billionaire when the people who did the actual work didn’t. More evidence that we don’t need billionaires.
didn’t do any of the work for originally coming up with the idea or making the site, and then he also didn’t do any of the work in making the site’s popular content
Every CEO ever. Valueless drain through which money is removed
their Wikipedia article claims that he bought 75% of the site from the founders, and that the founders were still involved after the sale. Terms were not disclosed in that article, and I am not inclined to search further. But it is safe to assume the founders got their bag.
If this guy came along and made more off their work, who cares? I think those founders made enough that they don’t have to worry about paying for porn ever again.
If this guy came along and made more off their work, who cares?
That money came of the backs of the performers, developers, and god only knows how many third world “content screeners” working for dollars a day to keep the site in compliance with local laws.
He didn’t just get rich ex nihilio. He extracted that money from other people’s hard work.
Well, yeah, that’s what owners and CEOs do, make money off the backs of others. (And other body parts, too, in this case). He’s no worse (or better) than the others.
That same Wiki article states that OnlyFans claims to have paid out $25B to “creators” as of last October. Ironically, these folks might be getting less screwed than content creators in other disciplines.
Ironically, these folks might be getting less screwed than content creators in other disciplines.
Enslaved on OnlyFans: Women describe lives of isolation, torment and sexual servitude
In one prominent case, influencer Andrew Tate, with millions of followers worldwide on social media, is accused of forcing women in Romania to produce porn for OnlyFans and pocketing the profits. He has denied the charges.
Something tells me that if OnlyFans didn’t exist, Andrew Tate would have still found a way to be an exploitative asshole.
If Mossad didn’t exist, Epstein would have still found a way to be a pedophile
If this guy came along and made more off their work, who cares?
I do. That’s the thing I am complaining about. People who only contributed money taking the lion’s share of the profits.
But what if the original founders got enough? If we are against billionaires existing, shouldn’t we be cheering on folks who find an off ramp before getting there?
Since I wasn’t complaining about the original founders, I’m not sure that this hypothetical is relevant.
What I do know is that a billion dollars is far more money than anybody needs to live extravagantly for the rest of their lives.
Onlyfam will be allowed to attend his funeral.
And no air conditioning…
Rest in piss.
Thanks for ruining the lives of people who desperately clamored to this awful existence of a company, selling their bodies off to make a cheap buck.
It doesn’t seem all that bad. OnlyFans seems more like a brothel when, in the past, there were only pimps.
That wound be true if that one brothel doesn’t act like a pimp with monopoly.
Good
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Lol. Good riddance.
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For everyone going, “billionaire = evil, death = good,” please think the man was just 43. Fuck cancer is the first thing that should come to mind.
Won’t someone please think of the billionaires? They’re people just like us, deserving of dignity and respect… this man spent six years guiding a machine to squeeze pennies from the lonely and desperate, paying third worlders less than a sandwich a day to meet their sexting quotas, exploiting incel’s need for connection with a slow drip of synthesized hope. That has to count for something
Anyone that holds on to that much wealth is evil.
I hear you, but I think “celebrate billionaire donor to AIPAC is dead” still takes priority over “fuck cancer” IN THIS Particular case.
Nature filtered out a real shithead from society.
All this guy has was not being as well known as the others. He still operated a platform that preyed upon people desperate for money and/or sex, and milked the hell out of covid lockdown.
Billionaires should die as young as possible, by whatever means karma chooses.
