China’s TikTok is reportedly profiting from sexual livestreams involving children, while the platform’s moderation policies are too weak to pick up on the explicit content, according to an investigation by the BBC.
Three women in Kenya told BBC News that they have used the Chinese platform to openly advertise and negotiate payment in exchange for explicit content, noting that they began this activity on TikTok when they were just teenagers.
“Inbox me for kinembe guys. Tap, tap,” girls reportedly say on the TikTok livestreams while dancing salaciously before hundreds of people around the world.
The word “kinembe” means “clitoris” in the Swahili language, and “tap, tap” is commonly used on TikTok to ask viewers to “like” a livestream.
Meanwhile, when a performer says “inbox me,” it is a request for livestream viewers to send them a private message on the Chinese app to inquire about receiving more explicit material, such as stripping or sexual activities with other young women.
Viewers can also send emoji “gifts” that can later be converted into actual cash. When examining these suggestive TikTok livestreams, emoji gifts can be seen “fill[ing] the screen,” BBC noted.
“It’s not in TikTok’s interest to clamp down on soliciting of sex,” a former Kenyan TikTok moderator told the outlet, adding, “The more people give gifts on a livestream, [the] more revenue for TikTok.”
Notably, the Chinese app takes a roughly 70 percent cut from livestream gifts.
There also exists coded slang on TikTok livestreams, which are used to promote sexual services, BBC reported.
The former Kenyan TikTok moderator noted that while the Chinese company gives its moderators a reference guide for banned sexual words or actions on the platform, it is limited and does not take into account the slang terms used on the app.
Another content moderator told BBC that moderation is also hindered by TikTok’s increasing reliance on AI, which he said does not pick up on local slang.
BBC noted that an additional five current and former TikTok moderators have expressed similar concerns.
ChildFund Kenya and other charities, meanwhile, told the outlet that children as young as nine are participating in such activities.
BBC spoke with teenage girls and young women who told the outlet they spend up to six or seven hours every night engaging in such behavior on TikTok, making an average of around $38 per day.
“I sell myself on TikTok. I dance naked. I do that because that’s where I can earn money to support myself,” one 17-year-old girl told BBC.
The teen reportedly lives in a poor neighborhood in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, where 3,000 residents share toilets. The girl said the money she earns from producing sexual material on TikTok goes toward food for her child, and support her mother who has been struggling to pay rent since her father died.
The girl added that she even has a “digital pimp” who knew she was under 18 when she started creating such content at 15-years-old, noting, “he likes using young girls.”
She explained that the digital pimp takes more than half of what she earns in emoji gifts, and that working for him was like being in “handcuffs,” as he would continuously pressure her to host livestream more frequently.
“You are the one hurting because he gets the biggest share and yet it is you who has been used,” the teen told BBC.
Another girl who also said she started producing sexual material on TikTok livestreams at the age of 15 told the outlet she received requests from men in Europe, including a German man who ordered her to caress her breasts and genitals.
When her neighbors found out about the livestreams, they warned others not to associate with her and she was branded “as a lost sheep” in her community, she told BBC.
“Young people are told that I’ll mislead them,” she said. “I am lonely most of the time.”
Some of the girls and women also told the outlet that their online activity eventually transformed into real-life meet-ups with TikTok users who paid them for sex. They added that their own pimps have also pressured them into sex.
A TikTok spokesperson told BBC that the Chinese company “has zero tolerance for exploitation.”
“We enforce strict safety policies, including robust Live content rules, moderation in 70 languages, including Swahili, and we partner with local experts and creators, including our Sub-Saharan Africa Safety Advisory Council to continually strengthen our approach,” the TikTok spokesperson said.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
