TikTok profits from livestreams of families begging, BBC, 12 October 2022

Displaced families in Syrian camps are begging for donations on TikTok while the company takes up to 70% of the proceeds, a BBC investigation has found.

Children are livestreaming on the social media app for hours, pleading for digital gifts with a cash value.

The BBC saw streams earning up to $1,000 (£900) an hour, but found the people in the camps received only a tiny fraction of that.

TikTok said it would take prompt action against "exploitative begging".

The company said this type of content was not allowed on its platform, and it said its commission from digital gifts was significantly less than 70%. But it declined to confirm the exact amount...

In the camps in north-west Syria, the BBC found that the trend was being facilitated by so-called "TikTok middlemen", who provided families with the phones and equipment to go live...

Mona Ali Al-Karim and her six daughters are among the families who go live on TikTok every day, sitting on the floor of their tent for hours, repeating the few English phrases they know: "Please like, please share, please gift."

Mona's husband was killed in an airstrike and she is using the livestreams to raise money for an operation for her daughter Sharifa, who is blind.

The gifts they're asking for are virtual, but they cost the viewers real money and can be withdrawn from the app as cash. Livestream viewers send the gifts - ranging from digital roses, costing a few cents, to virtual lions costing around $500 - to reward or tip creators for content.

For five months, the BBC followed 30 TikTok accounts broadcasting live from Syrian camps for displaced people and built a computer program to scrape information from them, showing that viewers were often donating digital gifts worth up to $1,000 an hour to each account. Families in the camps said they were receiving only a tiny fraction of these sums, however.

With TikTok declining to say how much it takes from gifts, the BBC ran an experiment to track where the money goes. A BBC reporter in Syria contacted one of the TikTok-affiliated agencies saying he was living in the camps. He obtained an account and went live, while BBC staff in London sent TikTok gifts worth $106 from another account.

At the end of the livestream, the balance of the Syrian test account was $33. TikTok had taken 69% of the value of the gifts...

The $33 remaining from the BBC's $106 gift was reduced by a further 10% when it was withdrawn from the local money transfer shop. TikTok middlemen would take 35% of the remainder, leaving a family with just $19...

Marwa Fatafta, from digital rights organisation Access Now, says these livestreams run contrary to TikTok's own policies to "prevent the harm, endangerment or exploitation" of minors on the platform...

TikTok's rules say you must have 1,000 followers before you can go live, you must not directly solicit for gifts and must "prevent the harm, endangerment or exploitation" of minors on the platform.

But when the BBC used the in-app system to report 30 accounts featuring children begging, TikTok said there had been no violation of its policies in any of the cases.

After the BBC contacted TikTok directly for comment, the company banned all of the accounts.

It said in a statement: "We are deeply concerned by the information and allegations brought to us by the BBC, and have taken prompt and rigorous action.