They also centralize all the risk. Operating a “pay me $X/month” service is really complicated legally, ethically, etc.
In a way, OF is valuable to platforms like Twitter and Instagram, because it has monopolized a lot of the riskiest cash flow that those companies would prefer to avoid / explicitly disallow in their ToS for a “subscribe to this influencer” service.
If OF had their own discovery platform, they’d have to deal with the thorny editorial problem of ranking. In the current setup, they can totally sidestep it. It would probably cost them more to operate discovery than it’s worth.
In a way, OF is valuable to platforms like Twitter and Instagram, because it has monopolized a lot of the riskiest cash flow that those companies would prefer to avoid / explicitly disallow in their ToS for a “subscribe to this influencer” service.
If OF had their own discovery platform, they’d have to deal with the thorny editorial problem of ranking. In the current setup, they can totally sidestep it. It would probably cost them more to operate discovery than it’s worth.