As she posed and pursed her lips, her long blonde hair draped over her tight black bralette, some asked MJ to show them her feet. These exchanges did not take place between adults at a nightclub; they took place on TikTok Live, where MJ, who said she was 14 years old, was broadcasting with friends to 2, strangers on a recent Saturday night. A Forbes review of hundreds of recent TikTok livestreams reveals how viewers regularly use the comments to urge young girls to perform acts that appear to toe the line of child pornography β rewarding those who oblige with TikTok gifts, which can be redeemed for money, or off-platform payments to Venmo, PayPal or Cash App accounts that users list in their TikTok profiles.
Imagine a local joint putting a bunch of minors on a stage before a live adult audience that is actively giving them money to perform whatever G, PG or PG activities they request, she said. But that's exactly what TikTok is doing here. The transactions are happening in a public online forum open to viewers almost anywhere on the planet. Some of the demands are explicit β like asking girls to kiss each other, spread their legs or flash the camera β and some harder to detect, masked with euphemisms.
And many simply coax girls to show their tongues and belly buttons or do handstands and splits. In return, the girls are showered with virtual gifts, like flowers, hearts, ice cream cones and lollipops, that can be converted to cash. 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 company rules.
The company said in an email that it also removes content containing sexual activities or attempting solicitation and that it has a zero tolerance policy for child sexual abuse material. Some of the accounts that hosted livestreams viewed by Forbes were no longer active several weeks later. The U. But TikTok was not aware of the Homeland Security investigation, she said.
The department did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Forbes. In the wake of a congressional probe into how Meta and Instagram may hurt children and teens β an inquiry prompted by revelations by a Meta whistleblower last fall β lawmakers in October for the first time ever hauled in a TikTok executive to testify about its own policies on underage users. Meta-owned Instagram declined to comment for this story. A hotly-contested provision of federal law called Section of the Communications Decency Act, which shields internet companies from legal liability for hosting and moderating content that users post on their platforms, could protect TikTok from much of the activity happening on TikTok Live.
