I quit medical school to create a porn app that’s even dirtier than OnlyFans

For two years, Stella Barey, 29, was working around the clock, selling content on OnlyFans.

When she wasn’t filming videos, she was putting in a shift behind-the-scenes, advertising her content across social media platforms — which would inevitably get banned or deleted due to their adult content.

Burnt out and fed-up, Stella had a lightbulb moment. She decided to create her own app, Hidden, created by sex workers, for sex workers.  

‘No one is treating us like influencers, who get brand trips, or £60,000 per Instagram post,’ Stella tells Metro. ‘Instead we’re getting deleted on Instagram once a month. I decided to change that.’

Stella was actually studying medicine at the prestigious University of California (UCLA) when she joined OnlyFans. 

With plans to go onto postgraduate medical school, she needed some extra cash and, with friends in the porn industry, selling X-rated content seemed like a smart move.

‘For the first five years, I posted every single day, multiple times a day, on TikTok and my OnlyFans. It was my entire life,’ Stella recalls. ‘I woke up every morning, had coffee, and immediately recorded a ton of TikToks.’

Stella quickly found her niche: anal sex content. At the time, she was enjoying anal sex with her boyfriend, and says that it felt natural to talk about it, and perform it, online.

She continues: ‘I’d spend the afternoon and evening filming anal content for my subscribers. There were times I had anal twice a day.’

She also sold nudes and solo masturbation videos, sex tapes with girls, and squirting. Tapping into niche markets, which can be more lucrative, her footage became more extreme, engaging in pee play, and producing anal training guides for double anal or double vaginal penetration.

Extreme sex work can have huge detrimental impacts on the body. Physically, extreme anal sex, for example, can result in conditions such as fissures, incontinence and STIs. And mentally, doctors have previously told Metro it ‘could well damage your future life irrevocably.’

Stella, however says that ‘it was so fun, and the best time ever’, but adds that her work ‘consumed her whole life.’

@bellastarey

Replying to @saggytariuses nearly impossible

♬ original sound – stella ᥫ᭡

Still, her hard work was paying off, and the cash started rolling in. ‘I made £6,000 the first month and £29,000 the second month,’ she says.

Eventually, her average monthly salary across various porn platforms like OnlyFans, Fansly, and ManyVids amounted to a staggering £40,000 a month. But she soon noticed a growing list of problems with how these websites operated.

Stella says they required 24/7 content creation on social media sites to advertise her content, directing users to the various porn platforms. She would then often get banned due to censorship rules.

‘Whether it’s showing too much of my ass or talking about sex work and sexual health, I’ve been banned more than 22 times on TikTok since I first started,’ Stella says.

‘After a few months of developing a TikTok account, the violations and reports would get so high the account would get banned. A lot of my Instagram, Reddit, or X bans have been purely for having a link in bio, or due to people mass reporting because they aren’t supportive of sex work.

‘I put so much of my energy into sex work as a result, I was working harder than I was at university,’ Stella says. ‘I was so passionate about my medical degree, but my interests shifted to sex work.’

Stella ended up dropping out of university, but she started to feel like it was all for nothing. ‘I’d just get banned again, which means you can’t promote your content,’ she adds.

And, rather than feeling a sense of community, Stella says her work felt isolating. ‘As girls on the internet we exist in our bedrooms across the world — there’s a massive lack of community,’ she says. 

While her mum supports her, Stella is aware her father, who she’s had a tricky relationship with since her parents divorced, doesn’t approve.

‘It doesn’t make him happy, though he’s never said anything negative to me directly,’ she explains.

‘But I hear of creators’ family members who demean them, tell them they’ll never have a loving relationship, or tell them they’re going to hell.

‘Don’t even get me started on the amount of girls in sex work who support their families, while their families continue to demean their job.’

What did Stella do about all this?

In April 2025, Stella had enough, and created her own porn site, Hidden, named after the ‘hidden’ folder on your phone. 

She says she had countless naysayers tell her she’d never be able to compete with sites like OnlyFans, but that was never her aim.

‘Girls I know have about eight different platforms they make money on,’ Stella adds. ‘OnlyFans is always going to be the Instagram of paid porn content, but I want to be a niche site that pushes super pro-sex worker policies so, eventually, every other site has to follow in our footsteps.’

What is Hidden and what does it look like?

On Hidden, there’s a TikTok-style For You Page with some free content, designed to draw users to an individual creator’s personal page, meaning women are no longer forced to advertise on social media. 

‘We constantly push videos out over and over again,’ Stella explains. ‘When a user is scrolling, it should feel like TikTok.’ This means creators don’t have to keep creating lots of content, and videos are constantly discoverable to new users.

Once someone has discovered a sex worker on the FYP, they go to that creator’s specific page where they can subscribe, message, and send tips.

‘If users want to buy 70 videos in the middle of the night without even messaging you, they can,’ Stella says. On OnlyFans a customer would have to ask for a specific video in a message, creating a lot of admin.

The store is one-click-to-buy (a feature that lets registered users buy items instantly with a single click, without re-entering shipping, billing, or payment details), a streamlined feature which Stella claims gives them a ‘higher spend per fan than OnlyFans’.

All-in-all sex workers can earn money through their subscription fee, through pay-extra locked content and tips. 

As with other porn sites, once someone purchases a video, they can watch it as often as they like, but it’s illegal to pirate and distribute it.

‘We have protections against people screenshotting, screen-recording, and downloading, though people can sometimes get around those,’ Stella adds.

When it comes to sex workers profits, the site hopes to launch live streaming and will take 18% of the money made, less than the 20% OnlyFans and Fansly take.

What content can you get on Hidden?

Anything illegal or containing blood or excrement is banned on Hidden, but it is far more relaxed than other pay-for-content platforms.

‘We allow outdoor content, pee play, BDSM, gaping (where a butt plug is removed and the anus hasn’t closed) and kinks and fetishes that are slowly being banned on OnlyFans and Fansly,’ Stella explains.

‘Fansly recently banned Furries, but we allow them — we just communicate with payment processors to get them to allow us to sell this content.’

Why is Stella so intent on allowing content on Hidden that other porn sites don’t?

‘Censorship kills creativity and sites have slowly pulled back from what they allow — OnlyFans used to allow squirting, peeing, and furry content but these allowances were slowly rescinded as it tried to distance itself from porn,’ she explains.

Back in 2021, OnlyFans made the surprising announcement that it would block sexually explicit content. However, the site backtracked, reversing this ban within a week.

Stella continues: ‘It’s important to provide a safe space for niche creators who don’t have access to well-made ethical platforms to sell their content.’

There are also strong safeguards in place to protect creators, such as consent forms, ID verification and no illegal or harmful content.

‘We acknowledge that adult sexuality is diverse, while also having strong safeguards,’ she says.

Sex worker Tiffany Wisconsin, 37, got into sex work in 2021, to support herself and her children, after breaking up with her high school sweetheart of 17 years.

She tells Metro that Hidden is much easier to use than other platforms. She specialises in group sex and having sex with older men, and finds getting the consent forms sorted much more straight forward.

‘Getting people to sign the consent forms and getting those sorted is very easy compared to other sites,’ Tiffany explains. ‘I feel like other platforms make it so difficult, as if they don’t want the other person in the video to be approved. At Hidden, they send their ID and the consent form and it’s done.’

She adds that because Hidden is a new platform she doesn’t make as much money as she does on other more established platforms, but she doesn’t have to work as hard.

‘The FYP just pushes out your content over and over, and the marketplace means you don’t have to fuss about with trying to get guys to message you and buy from you,’ Tiffany says.

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