TIKTOK ‘profiting from sexual live streams’ involving children who ‘dance naked’
Social media giant TikTok is being investigated over how it uses children’s data – as a separate probe claimed it was earning money from live-streamed sex performances by girls aged just 15.
The China-owned video platform takes a cut of around 70% from ‘emoji gifts’ paid by men to watch shows by women in Africa, the BBC said. Investigators watched as the women danced and twerked suggestively, watched by hundreds of people around the world. The gifts can later be converted to cash. In some live-streams, women used coded sex slang and advertised sexual services on other platforms. One 17-year-old in Kenya, admitted: ‘I sell myself on TikTok. I dance naked. I do that because that’s where I can earn money to support myself.’ She was just 15 when a friend showed her how to bypass age restrictions on the site to go live, Esther revealed. Others said they performed up to seven hours a night to make £30 – enough for a week’s food and transport. Esther – not her real name – lives in a poor part of Nairobi, with 3,000 sharing toilet facilities.
TikTok users with large followings sometimes act as paid ‘digital pimps’ for the women – hosting live-stream sex shows while evading content moderators. The platform says it pays around 40,000 people worldwide to check live content. However, one former moderator told the BBC’s TikTok And The Digital Pimps: Eye Investigates: ‘It’s not in TikTok’s interest to clamp down on soliciting of sex – the more people give gifts on a live-stream the more revenue for TikTok.’
TikTok told the BBC it had ‘zero tolerance for exploitation’, adding: ‘We enforce strict safety policies, including robust Live content rules, moderation in 70 languages, including Swahili, and we partner with local experts and creators… to continually strengthen our approach. John Edwards, Britain’s Information Commissioner, yesterday revealed a major investigation had begun into how TikTok uses the data of 13- to 17-year-olds to recommend further content to them. Platforms which collect UK children’s user data must minimise the amount they gather and take extra care when processing it.
TikTok insisted it had ‘strict and comprehensive measures to protect privacy and safety of teens’ and ‘robust restrictions on content allowed in teens’ feeds. Online safety regulator Ofcom launched an enforcement programme to ensure tech firms complied with the new Online Safety Act. They must carry out risk assessments by the end of the month, setting out how likely users are to encounter illegal content.
Reuters reports that, Tech firms including TikTok, Snapchat and Stability AI have signed a joint statement pledging to work together to counter child sex abuse images generated by artificial intelligence. Britain announced the joint statement – which also listed the United States, German and Australian governments among its 27 signatories – at an event on Monday being held in the run up to a global summit hosted by the UK on AI safety this week. “We resolve to sustain the dialogue and technical innovation around tackling child sexual abuse in the age of AI,” the statement read.
“We resolve to work together to ensure that we utilise responsible AI for tackling the threat of child sexual abuse and commit to continue to work collaboratively to ensure the risks posed by AI to tackling child sexual abuse do not become insurmountable.”
Britain cited data from the Internet Watch Foundation showing that in one dark web forum users had shared nearly 3,000 images AI generated child sexual abuse material.
“It is essential, now, we set an example and stamp out the abuse of this emerging technology before it has a chance to fully take root,” said IWF chief executive Susie Hargreaves.
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The article was originally published by metro.co.uk