Winner-Take-All? Visibility, Availability, and Heterogeneity on Webcam Sex Platforms

Abstract

Online platforms have profoundly changed the organization of work in many economic sectors, and the sex industry is no exception. Webcam sex platforms, in particular, host large and heterogeneous populations of workers who are not formally employed and rely heavily on algorithmic systems to manage this workforce. These systems are often said to produce or reinforce unpredictable and unequal winner-take-all effects, contributing to economic pressure and precarity. Most research trying to empirically assess these claims has focused on single platforms and on the experiences of limited samples of regular workers, excluding more sporadic performers that nonetheless compete for visibility within the same ranking systems. In this article, we seek to address these limitations through a multi-platform study based on systematic ranking data collected by scraping the complete homepages of five webcam platforms over 11 weeks. The article proceeds in four steps. We first discuss existing work on algorithmic workplace management and webcam sex platforms. We then introduce the case studies, present our empirical approach, and discuss ethical considerations. The findings section is organized around two complementary lines of inquiry: an examination of visibility distributions across our sample of websites, as well as their connection with viewer numbers, and an exploration of the relationship between visibility and labor practices, which allows us to link performer availability to ranking outcomes. We conclude by highlighting the substantial differences between these designed marketplaces and discuss repercussions for both webcam sex research and the broader field of platform studies.