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Pornography has exploded from “dirty” magazines to a multi-billion-dollar global industry on the web.

It’s influencing children more and more as they have access with the click of a computer mouse, it’s affecting men’s sexual health, it’s changing perceptions of reality, it’s fueling addictions and it’s generating truckloads of cash for the players involved.

But all of a sudden, a speed bump has appeared: One of the most progressive nations in the world abruptly has taken legal action against one of the most popular porn platforms, OnlyFans, after concluding online acts are no different than prostitution.

It is a report in the Washington Stand that has described how the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament, adopted a law forbidding people from offering OnlyFans webcam performers money in exchange for performing a specific sexual act.

“Under the new law, which takes effect July 1, anyone found guilty of buying a personalized sexual act (but not those selling it) face up to one year in prison, and anyone guilty of financially exploiting the person carrying out the sex act could face four years in prison,” the report said.

Teresa Carvalho, of the liberal Social Democratic Party, explained, “This is a new form of sex sales and it is high time that we modernize sex sales, and that we also include sales that occur remotely on digital platforms such as OnlyFans.”

There is, she confirmed, “a dark picture behind [OnlyFans performances that involve] drugs, human trafficking and abuse, as well as being a gateway to more prostitution.”

The law, she said, is intended to protect children and young people.

The Washington Stand reported, “The law criminalizes only paying for personalized interactions, not subscribing to prerecorded pornographic content. But even such a limited protection would eliminate the majority of the pornographic website’s cash flow. Keily Blair, CEO of OnlyFans, told The Wall Street Journal last December that pay-per-view messages make up 59% of the platform’s total revenue, while OnlyFans derives 41% from subscription fees.”

Marcel van der Watt of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation commended Sweden “for making a concerted effort to confront sex trafficking and prostitution that happens online.”

The online prostitution, analysts confirm, is the start of a road that leads to physical prostitution.

Van der Watt said eliminating the “buyers” of prostitution will help bring sexual exploitation to an end.

Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, welcomed the move.

“As I recommended in my report on prostitution and [violence against women and girls], States must adopt a standard approach to online and off- line prostitution.

The platform itself repeatedly has been accused of misusing and abusing victims, and policymakers have charged there’s evidence of child sexual abuse, sex trafficking and other forms of exploitation.

Multiple testimonials have confirmed the industry uses and abuses women and girls, and NCOSE sought a Justice Department investigation a year ago on the evidence, but the Joe Biden administration took no action.

The corporations owning such sites shield themselves under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which says they cannot be prosecuted for videos created by others.

Such online images also are blamed regularly for the actions of the mentally unstable, such as stalkers who pursue performers and those who threatened their lives.

The Stand reported: “In 2022, Wisconsin police arrested a 45-year-old former high school swim coach who drove more than 400 miles to stalk an unnamed female OnlyFans creator whom he had been interacting with online. He followed her to a baseball game and paid a boy to hand deliver a note to her containing $200. He later sent her pictures of her apartment and from the baseball game with the menacing message, ‘I was ten feet away from you.’ He later said he watched her have sex with her boyfriend through her apartment window and accused her of cheating on him.”

The report noted OnlyFans reported revenue last year of $1.3 billion.

Sweden previously adopted a law to ban buying sexual services “without punishing the seller.”