Editorial — Encyclopedia

Long-form reference entries on the people, studios, technical questions and policy debates that shape the contemporary adult-media landscape. Each entry is citation-anchored, durable, and authored by Step Secrets contributors who track the field. Cross-links to the catalog are contextual: a single in-prose mention where the reference earns it.

All entries

6 entries

Erika Lust and the rise of feminist erotic cinema

How a Swedish-born, Barcelona-based filmmaker turned a manifesto into a studio, a distribution model, and a two-decade case study in what feminist adult cinema can look like when production, consent practice, and aesthetic ambition are taken seriously.

M. Brennan · 9 min read · 1,820 words · 6 citations ·

AI, deepfakes, and the synthetic adult content debate (2026)

A working overview of how generative AI is reshaping adult-content production, detection, and policy in 2026 — what the research literature says, what the major platforms have committed to, and what the open questions look like at the end of the first decade of consumer-grade deepfake tools.

R. Mehta · 8 min read · 1,760 words · 7 citations ·

The economics of independent adult studios: a Mylfed case study

A working overview of how a single mid-tier adult production house — Mylfed — fits into the post-tube, post-OnlyFans, post-payment-processor-pressure economy of the independent adult industry, and what its catalog structure reveals about studio-led production at scale in the mid-2020s.

L. Hoffmann · 8 min read · 1,690 words · 6 citations ·

The post-2020 payment-processor reordering of adult media

How a sequence of Mastercard, Visa, and platform-policy decisions in 2020–2021 restructured the compliance, distribution, and labour landscape of the legitimate adult industry — and what the new equilibrium looks like five years later.

L. Hoffmann · 8 min read · 1,730 words · 7 citations ·

The Spanish erotic film scene 2000–2026

From Bigas Luna's late filmography and the Barcelona-centred indie scene of the early 2000s through the Erika Lust era and the present-day cohort of feminist and queer directors — a twenty-six-year survey of Spanish erotic cinema as a coherent national tradition.

M. Brennan · 7 min read · 1,640 words · 6 citations ·

Tube-site economics and the consolidation of adult video distribution

How the free-to-view tube-site model that emerged in 2006–2007 reshaped adult video distribution, what the consolidated ecosystem under MindGeek/Aylo and its peers actually looks like in mid-2026, and where the structural pressure points sit going forward.

L. Hoffmann · 7 min read · 1,610 words · 6 citations ·

About this project

The Encyclopedia is the long-form complement to the Step Secrets catalog. Where the catalog is built to help readers find a specific scene quickly, the Encyclopedia is built for readers who want context — the history of a director, the structure of an industry, the state of a technical question, the institutional response to a policy shift. Entries are written by Step Secrets contributors, cite their sources in full, and are updated when the literature shifts. Suggestions for new entries can be sent through the contact form on the About page.

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