Livestreams on the social media app are a popular place for men to lurk and for young girls—enticed by money and gift—to perform sexually suggestive acts.
Livestreams on the social media app are a popular place for men to lurk and for young girls — enticed by money and gifts — to perform sexually suggestive acts.“$35 for a flash,” one viewer responded. Another asked how much to send to her Cash App.
U.S. TikTok users are supposed to be at least 18 in order to send or receive gifts through Live that can be turned into money, and those under 16 are meant to be blocked from hosting livestreams altogether, according to. “TikTok has robust policies and measures to help protect the safety and well-being of teens,” a company spokesperson said. Those include setting accounts under age 16 to “private” by default and restricting them from using direct messaging.
Former federal prosecutor Mary Graw Leary said “the fundamental problem of Section 230” is that it enables social media platforms to get away with, and even monetize, many of the same harms that could result in a lawsuit for a brick-and-mortar business — simply because they’re happening online. TikTok is far from the only social media platform to enable payments or virtual gifting between users, or to offer live broadcasting features. But its scale and young userbase set TikTok apart from rivals, according to the Stanford Internet Observatory’s chief technology officer David Thiel, making the platform’s problems with live content, and the monetization of it, even more acute.
“The challenge is: it goes all over the world after that,” says Peter Gentala, senior legal counsel at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Predators on livestreams may “abuse in the moment, screen capture, then use that for their own purposes afterwards and make other money for it on the Internet, whether it's dark web or other places where it's openly traded.”
And others: “Pop one.” “Now the shorts.” “More midrift yo.” “Keep going baby.” “At 100k she’ll flash.” “Tell me where to come so I can come give you the attention you are actually looking for.” Some content on Live may not cross the line into violating platform rules or state and federal laws, experts say. But they warn that encouraging and financially rewarding minors through the streams — even for doing things that seem relatively innocuous — can often escalate into more exploitative situations.–Special Agent Austin Berrier of Homeland Security Investigations
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