A look at MrDeepFakes, a site with obscure ownership that hosts non-consensual deepfake porn, has close to 650K members, and gets millions of visits per month
This article is the result of a collaboration with German YouTube channel STRG_F. You can watch their documentary here. Bluesky: @mikefulk , @beaudonelly , @bellingcat.com , @herdaleg , @bellingcat.com , @bellingcat.com , and @bellingcat.com . Forums: r/OSINT Bluesky: Mike Fulk / @mikefulk : AI has really been a transformative technology, worth spewing carbon into the skies and every penny of the hundreds of billions of dollars spent! [embedded post] Beau Donelly / @beaudonelly : The Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab's @kentonthibaut.bsky.social discusses privacy and security concerns of apps linked to China for our @bellingcat.com piece about the tech companies promoted by the MrDeepFakes porn website. www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and- ... @bellingcat.com : Candy. ai another app on MrDeepFakes claims it allows users to create their own “AI girlfriend”. Pop up ads on MrDeepfakes for the app are labelled with “Generate Your AI Trash Whore” and “AI Jerk Off”. Giles Herdale / @herdaleg : More concerning evidence of the murky ecosystem of enablers of #deepfaked non-consensual intimate images #NCII or sexual digital forgeries being used against advocates for addressing violence against women and girls #VAWG. Demands robust, joined up policy responses. @bellingcat.com : Those behind the site are difficult to track. The site's hosting providers change constantly. Premium memberships are processed with cryptocurrency through a system that uses a new address for each transaction. Transactions through PayPal direct to numerous accounts under unverifiable names. @bellingcat.com : Deepswap AI is permanently linked on the top bar of the MrDeepFakes website. It is a tool that allows users to create lifelike deepfake photos and videos for $9.99 per month. Marketing for the app plays on the ability to use your own images, with the caption “Deepfake anyone you want”. [image] @bellingcat.com : Patrizia Schlosser discovered more than 30 images of herself online, pictured naked and in chains, in sexually explicit scenarios. But the imagery was all faked. Bellingcat, with STRG_F, investigate the AI porn website disseminating this material, MrDeepfakes. www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and- ... Forums: r/OSINT : Faking It: Deepfake Porn Site's Link to Tech Companies
Context & Ripple Effects
The investigation puts a named distribution hub and its commercial connections into a problem previously documented at platform scale: a 2023 study counted widespread non-consensual deepfake pornography across dozens of sites and billions of views (earlier evidence of the category's scale).
It also connects creation tools, advertising, payment routing and hosting in one ecosystem. That makes enforcement harder than removing an individual upload, particularly amid the previously noted gap between state-level remedies and a consistent US-wide response (calls for a federal legal framework).
First-order effects
- MrDeepFakes, Deepswap AI and promoted services such as Candy.ai face heightened public and investigative scrutiny over how creation, distribution and monetization are connected.
- People whose likenesses appear on the site face continued exposure and a more complex takedown challenge when material is circulated through a large member community rather than a single offender.
Second-order effects
- Payment providers such as PayPal and advertising or tool partners may face pressure to review merchant relationships and verification practices where transactions are routed through unverifiable identities.
- The findings strengthen the case for enforcement aimed at the wider supply chain, echoing concerns around model-sharing platforms as non-consensual AI imagery proliferated (the earlier CivitAI scrutiny).
Third-order effects
- If investigators and policymakers increasingly treat these sites as interconnected commercial systems, platform governance is likely to shift from content removal alone toward accountability for tools, payments and promotion.
- The case underscores a persistent enforcement-surface problem: scalable synthetic-media tools can lower production barriers faster than victims can identify operators or obtain effective remedies.
The trend: Non-consensual synthetic media is evolving from isolated abuse into an interconnected commercialization ecosystem that tests the reach of platform, payment and legal accountability.