It's the world's oldest profession.  

Sex workers, prostitutes, and the pimps who live off them have been around since the dawn of time. There are mentions of them in the Code of Hammurabi. The dusty case files of medieval Europe talk about them constantly.  There are references to them in Victorian literature from Charles Dickens' Nancy and Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist to the drunken orgies of the Russian military officers and gypsy girls in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.

However, in the 21st century there is, of course, a high tech spin to a very old issue.

OnlyFans is spoken of as the 'Uber of sex work'. A disruptive social media platform that purportedly allows sex workers to communicate and make money from their customers without the dangerous control of their pimps.

Unlikely female allies have hailed the site as 'self-esteem conferring'.  An Australian model raised $1 million to help fight forest fires by posting nude photos of herself. And then the Disney star Bella Thorne made over $1 million in one day by promising to do the same thing. 

However, there's a dark side to this new phenomenon.  Critics are claiming that far from saving people from exploitation, human trafficking and underage harm sites  like OnlyFans are doing the exact opposite.

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