Sweden’s expanded Sex Purchase Act came into force this month, criminalising the purchase of custom online sexual content and pushing OnlyFans to disable its interactive services for Swedish users.
Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer framed the change bluntly: “Anyone who buys sexual acts performed remotely should be penalised in the same way as those who buy sexual acts involving physical contact.” The penalty now reaches up to one year in prison.
Gender Equality Minister Nina Larsson says the industry “is moving online and into the digital world. The legislation needs to follow suit.”
However, enforcement remains untested. Larsson concedes police and prosecutors must still “develop methods to apply this legislation.”
In response, OnlyFans creators say the state has confused fantasy with prostitution. “We don’t sell sex,” veteran content maker Mirka Norrstrom insisted. “We sell a dream, a fantasy, or a video or image.”
Those distinctions carry little weight under the new rules. The law forbids any custom content that a paying fan can influence, leaving creators unable to chat, livestream, or fulfil bespoke requests. Norrstrom says that “our followers cannot contact us in any way,” gutting her primary revenue stream.
OnlyFans, owned by London-based Fenix International, grossed $1.3 billion in 2023 on the back of $6.6 billion in subscriber payments, returning 80% to its 4.1 million creators. That growth story now collides with a Nordic policy model first tested on street prostitution in 1999: punish demand, leave supply technically legal.
Early evidence suggests the clampdown may simply relocate risk. Cara, an eight-year online veteran who moved to Denmark to keep working, warns: “I know several people who have now gone into selling physical sex. People are going to die.”
Across the Atlantic, US lawmakers are watching. Rep. Ann Wagner has already flagged OnlyFans as a vector for “sexual exploitation” and is signalling fresh regulation under the Trump administration. With roughly two-thirds of platform revenue generated in the US, a Sweden-style statute would decimate earnings and the site’s mooted $8 billion sale valuation.
For now, OnlyFans states it “complies with all laws and regulations in the jurisdictions in which it operates.” Compliance in Sweden, however, means shrinking to a glorified video archive—stripping out exactly the real-time intimacy that made the platform worth $657 million in pre-tax profit last year.
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