In May 2025, Sweden amended its 1999 Sex Purchase Act to criminalize the purchase of certain sexual acts performed without physical contact, thereby bringing digital interactions within the scope of its existing prostitution law. The Sex Purchase Act criminalizes the purchase of in-person sexual services while decriminalizing the selling of those services. Under the new amendment, it does not matter whether the sex act is performed live or viewed later; what matters is that payment was a precondition for the act and was made or promised primarily to allow the purchaser to view it. While online users may still purchase pre-made sexual content, the law bans users from purchasing online sexual content specifically created for them. Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strömmer has emphasized that this reform is a natural extension of Sweden’s existing prostitution framework, which is grounded in a consistent principle: penalizing demand rather than supply.
The amendment reflects a broader understanding that buying sex, even remotely, is a form of exploitation, and selling it, even in digital spaces, constitutes a form of prostitution. Even without physical contact, the sex buyer is still paying for sexual acts tailored to his own demand, and the seller may be acting under conditions of economic vulnerability and unequal bargaining power. As a result, the purchase of personalized sexual content can produce the same harm and allow for the same opportunities for abuse as in-person prostitution. This perspective underlies Sweden’s effort to ensure that what is illegal in the physical world is treated the same way online, creating a uniform and coherent legal standard. These concerns are particularly apparent in the context of digital platforms that facilitate paid, personalized sexual interactions.
One example is OnlyFans, where users pay to subscribe to creators, most often for adult sexual content, and can interact directly with them or request personalized material. While these platforms are often framed as empowering or safer alternatives to traditional prostitution, because they allow creators to avoid in-person encounters and maintain physical distance from users, they can create an illusion of safety that obscures underlying risks. In reality, these platforms facilitate the purchase of personalized sexual content in ways that can be just as exploitative as in-person prostitution. Investigations and advocacy reports have documented widespread instances of coercion, trafficking, and non-consensual content linked to such platforms.
That exploitation is further intensified by a growing class of intermediaries who present themselves as “management” for OnlyFans creators. These agencies recruit creators with promises of increased income, then take a percentage of their earnings and control creators’ platform accounts and content production, effectively operating as pimps. In many cases, creators are pressured to relinquish control over financial accounts to these agencies, creating conditions that can enable coercion and financial exploitation behind what appears to be consensual content. As one Swedish policymaker described, this “digitalized prostitution” blurs the boundaries between pornography and more severe forms of exploitation, allowing abuse to persist beneath the surface.
Importantly, Sweden’s approach is not solely about preventing individual instances of harm, but about addressing the broader cultural conditions that sustain exploitation. By penalizing sex buyers, including in digital spaces, the law aims to prevent vulnerable individuals from entering prostitution and to affirm society’s view of purchasing sex as a fundamentally reprehensible act. Research on Sweden’s original Sex Purchase Act suggests that targeting sex buyers can shift public attitudes over time. This cultural dimension is central to the amendment’s purpose. Widespread access to violent or degrading sexual content, especially among young people, raises concerns not only about individual harm, but about the social messages such content conveys about women and relationships. Furthermore, Sweden’s model challenges the characterization of prostitution as ordinary work, emphasizing that what is often described as “consent” in the commercial sex trade instead lacks true mutuality, reflecting acquiescence under constrained circumstances, rather than a genuinely voluntary exchange.
In contrast, the United States has taken a more fragmented approach to regulating prostitution and digital sexual platforms, often focusing on platforms, traffickers, and other intermediaries rather than demand itself. This approach is in stark contrast to Sweden’s efforts to combat exploitation by penalizing the buyers of online sexual content. With the United States accounting for nearly half of OnlyFans’ global traffic, the scale of digital sexual commerce domestically underscores the limits of a framework that does not directly address demand as prostitution increasingly moves online.
The CSE Institute promotes this framework, also known as the Equality Model, which is centered on reducing demand while recognizing those who are bought and sold for sex as exploited rather than as criminals. By combining the criminalization of buyers and facilitators with public education and meaningful exit services, this approach reinforces the broader aim evident in Sweden’s reform: to reduce exploitation by reshaping both legal accountability and social norms surrounding the purchase of sex.
This piece is part of our first-year law student blog series. Congratulations to Schuyler Gebhardt on being chosen!
All views expressed herein are personal to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law or of Villanova University.