TikTok to ban children from livestreaming
Image credit: defendyoungminds.com
The minimum age for livestreaming on TikTok will increase from 16 to 18 starting next month.
An AP investigation uncovered hundreds of accounts soliciting money from Syrian refugee camps, featuring young people.
Some were earning up to $1,000 (£900) each hour, while TikTok took up to 70% of their withdrawals.
According to TikTok, in the future, only adults would be able to “use monetisation tools or send virtual presents.”
Additionally, users will be able to host adult-only livestreams “in the coming weeks.”
However, it’s unclear how TikTok will carry out these age limitations.
Both Google, which owns YouTube, and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have age restrictions on uploaded content and a minimum livestreaming age of 13.
More than 300 TikTok accounts livestreaming from north-western Syria were monitored for five months by the BBC’s Global Disinformation Unit, BBC Arabic, and BBC Eye Investigations.
The regulations of TikTok state that you must “avoid the injury, endangerment, or exploitation” of minors on the platform and that you may not explicitly beg for gifts.
When news reported 30 accounts with young beggars using the in-app system, TikTok claimed that none of the reports had violated its terms of service. TikTok removed all of the accounts when BBC News contacted the firm directly for comment.
Although TikTok claimed that this kind of content was not permitted on its platform and that its commission on digital gifts was significantly less than 70%, the precise figure is still unknown.
With over 3.9 billion downloads, TikTok is the fastest-growing social media app in the world. Since its debut in 2017, it has generated more than $6.2 billion in gross income from in-app purchases, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower.