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.
How OnlyFans, Fansly, and the broader creator-platform layer added — rather than replaced — a third distribution rail alongside studio-tier production and free-tube aggregation, and what the resulting three-layer topology looks like in mid-2026.
The US federal record-keeping requirement that has structured adult-content production compliance for almost four decades — its 1988 origins, the amendments that have reshaped its operational meaning, the 2010s litigation that narrowed its enforcement scope, and the post-2020 environment in which the regime now operates.
How AVN, XBIZ, and the broader adult-industry trade press built the institutional memory the field now depends on — and why the question of who counts as serious industry journalism in 2026 looks different from the question that produced AVN in 1983.
The traditional path from intent to adult content (search query → SERP click → site visit) has been reshaped over 2023-2026 by AI-search-engine arrival, SafeSearch defaults tightening, and the rise of directory-layer discovery alongside the tube-site dominance. A working overview of the contemporary discovery topology.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Real recent queries that brought readers into the editorial. Each chip links straight to the entry where the query landed.
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.