Contains adult themes: this story covers an adult content platform and the performers who run it. Nothing explicit is described.
In brief: In a Nov. 2 Dazed feature, Stella Barey, Ari Kytsya and Lana Rhoades describe Hidden, the creator-run, vertical-video adult app they co-founded, launched in 2025. Barey says it takes fans about 55 clicks on average to get from a PG social video to a creator’s X-rated work, and that Hidden cuts that to a few. The app bans AI-generated content, offers human customer service and has resisted invasive ID checks. Barey also takes aim at OnlyFans.
Every adult creator knows the trip: a fan sees a perfectly innocent video on TikTok or Instagram, then has to follow a trail of link pages and paywalls to the actual product. Stella Barey has counted it. Speaking to Dazed, she says it takes 55 clicks on average. Hidden, the app she co-founded with Ari Kytsya and Lana Rhoades, is built to make it a few.
The pitch is in the nickname: the “TikTok of porn,” an endlessly scrollable feed where, as Dazed puts it, “the clothes can come all the way off.” Each creator page works as a short-form storefront for their paid work.
A dig at the competition
Barey is not subtle about the rival she has in mind. “At its core, we’re really focused on community – and that’s something that OnlyFans, making billions, has never once put a dollar into,” she told Dazed. She calls OnlyFans the Instagram of porn: “The experience is so clinical, and it’s always going to be that, but there’s room for other places on the internet.”
She says she came up with the idea about five years ago, after collecting data on what her fans wanted; a high school best friend offered to help build a website. Turning that into an app took a lot of trial and error. “It has been a monster, and it’s still constantly being updated,” she says. The name was the easy part: a friend once remarked, “Yeah, I put all my nudes in my hidden folder on my iPhone.”
How the co-founders got on board
Barey and Rhoades met on a double date four years ago, Dazed reports, and later reconnected on Instagram. Rhoades said that when she looked at the site, “I felt it was the first OnlyFans competitor that ran as smoothly as TikTok.”
Kytsya’s reaction was quicker: “Oh my god, we’ve been needing this for so long.” Her problem is a familiar one. “For everyone in this industry, it’s a battle to exist on social media,” she says. “Every day I am risking getting my account banned, even though my socials are very ‘clean’.” Before Hidden, she told Dazed, she had met only two other adult creators in four years. Now she says she has met “so many.”
What’s different
According to Dazed, Hidden welcomes hardcore performers, bans AI-generated content, offers human customer service and has resisted invasive ID verification. Its algorithm isn’t built for infinite scrolling; instead, posts keep surfacing to new viewers over time, a form of passive promo. (In its Nov. 2 interview with Molly Little, OK! listed Hidden among the platforms she earns through.)
When Dazed spoke to the founders, they were preparing Hidden’s first livestream, a Halloween Streamathon with a costume contest, a gummy bear tasting, drag queens and clowns. Barey had her own prep to do. “I have to carve pumpkins,” she said.
Her bigger point is about history repeating. “Sex workers build up platforms before we’re always pushed off and have to find a new home,” Barey says. “At what point do we finally stop that and start building foundational building blocks before other people do?” Dazed’s piece gives no user or revenue figures, so whether it becomes the TikTok of porn or just a very well-organised hidden folder remains to be seen.
Source: Dazed, “The ‘TikTok of porn’ is being built by sex workers,” by Laura Pitcher, Nov. 2, 2026.