LOS ANGELES — Vice-owned tech news site Motherboard released a report this morning about the murky world of rogue actors “scraping” models’ content on premium platforms to share, and sell, alongside scraping tools through Discord servers.
Earlier this afternoon, Discord told Motherboard reporters Samantha Cole and Robert Cox that the company had removed some servers "where people were trading and selling databases of stolen videos and images from creators, as well as sharing tools to continue scraping more content."
The original report focused on the misidentified "data leaks" supposedly plaguing leading platforms like OnlyFans and others. These so-called "leaks," Cole and Cox explained, were actually the product, not of elite hacking, but of much more mundane, low-skills practice known as "scraping."
Though grabbing content from premium sites like OnlyFans manually, downloading videos one-by-one, “would be laborious and time-consuming,” Cole and Cox wrote this morning, “a user with some basic technical knowledge can automate this process and collect content by using a tool called a ‘scraper.’ This software churns through the OnlyFans site and downloads whatever videos and photos a user has access to.”
According to the Motherboard article, “any subscriber could run one of these programs and locally download all of the content a model has behind a paywall, then re-host it on free sites, resell it, or in the worst cases, use it to dox and harass models.”
The Motherboard investigation identified what the writers called “an entire supply chain of people stealing sex workers' labor using scraping programs, without permission, in some cases by the hundreds of terabytes.”
This morning, Cole and Cox also zeroed in on Discord servers selling scraping services, software and instructions.
"Some people own server farms that download terabytes of data every day from OF [OnlyFans]," a developer of one of the OnlyFans scrapers who goes by the handle Digital Criminal told Motherboard.
Scraping tools included Chrome browser extensions, Python scripts and a Windows program, some of which were successfully tested by the tech news site. Motherboard reported that “Google removed an OnlyFans scraping Chrome extension when approached for comment.”
"The data I scrape is resold to a few clients who either own adult websites that host pirated content or people who resell content on Discord. I only handle OnlyFans though," another developer identified as "DHRB" told Motherboard. "It really is just going down a rabbit hole. One person sells to another, and then that person sells to another, and so on."
Scraping's Victims
Motherboard also interviewed adult and cam performers with premium accounts, like Romi Rain and Mistress Harley, who stressed their feelings of violation and helplessness as victims of this blatantly unauthorized use of their data and IP.
ManyVids’ Bella French, JustFor.fans’ Dominic Ford and FanCentro’s Kat Revenga also spoke about scraping of models’ content.
An OnlyFans spokesperson told Motherboard that “the platform has a dedicated anti-piracy team that issues DMCA takedowns on behalf of its creators.”
"This procedure is inclusive of all required notices to move any infringement up to litigation if target websites refuse to comply," the spokesperson explained. "OnlyFans also notifies the offending domain registrars and hosting services as well as reporting to all major search engines. With a duty to help battle against illegal piracy, OnlyFans is firmly in the fight to protect user content. Takedown success rates this year have been over 75 percent across offending image hosting sites, torrent providers, and cyber lockers."
Cole and Cox reported that after the publication of their initial article, Discord “removed multiple servers and banned the owners of each,” according to a Discord spokesperson.
"Discord prohibits the sale, dissemination and promotion of cracked accounts," the spokesperson continued. "We ban users and shut down servers that are responsible for this behavior. In cases of copyrighted material, we respond promptly to DMCA takedown requests and take the appropriate action."
To read the original Motherboard article, “Inside the Underground Trade of Pirated OnlyFans Porn,” click here. For the afternoon update, “Discord Removes Servers Dedicated to Pirating Porn,” click here.