Central authority can be biased. Referring to TikTok

[_act_]

Let me make few quotes from this BBC news that makes me emotional because of the way poor people in camp in Syria were exploited by TikTok.

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.

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.

The gifts they're asking for are virtual, but they cost the viewers real money and can be withdrawn from the app as cash.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.

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 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The $33 remaining from the BBC's $106 gift was reduced by a further 10% when it was withdrawn from the local money transfer shop.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.

This is why I like bitcoin, no central authority is involved, rather than virtual assets that can only be converted to fiat on TikTok.

I see this as a way TikTok is exploiting poor people with the centralized tradable virtual assets on the platform. What about you, is this not an exploit while TikTok is saying it is the people in the camp that are exploiting the minors (or let us use donators)?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-63213567

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[Gyfts]

I'm more concerned at how many people are throwing money at these sob stories without the realization that their money never even gets seen by the subjects in the video suffering from poverty. The fees that impact the donations are part of the problem, but the bigger problem is social media grifters exploiting suffering children for their gain. Tiktok is a malignant tumor on society.

[lovesmayfamilis]

Lord, is it really interesting for someone to watch, first of all? I see it as a perversion. The fact that people are starving has not been a secret for a long time, but I consider it the height of madness to create such online broadcasts. Someone prosperous, having morning coffee and watching the news, suddenly stumbles upon the pleading cry of a poor girl, asking for some coins. It looks like wildness. But if it exists, then it's popular, right? Otherwise, why would everything be so organized? Instead, you can contribute to a humanitarian fund, from which assistance will be guaranteed. But the actions of the poor people themselves also fall under great doubt. A man sold livestock to buy himself a mobile phone. It would be better if he ran his own farm and fed his family with it.

[davis196]

Yes, TikTok sucks, but the problem here is that the children living in refugee camps don't realize that they are using the wrong platform to ask for donations. They could use Gofundme or some other platform that is dedicated to funding charity projects. I can't recommend a certain platform, because all online charity platforms have certain cons and limitations. TikTok isn't supposed to be used for charity. TikTok is supposed to be used for fun and consuming cringeworthy content. Putting the blame entirely on TikTok is kinda misleading here. TikTok is a business that wants profits, just like any other business. They have their Terms of Service and the users, who singed up there have agreed to those Terms and Service.

[vv181]

This kind of scheme encourages minors to do the job, all the live streamers or agency/middlemen will try to maximize their profit, and by seeking profit they are willing to use any things that attract the sympathy of anyone.

Actually, I have seen a similar approach even in my own country, Indonesia. So I rather think that it is an unintended consequence of the TikTok campaign that tries to maximize screen time, but gets profited by the streamers who are begging for their own lives and trying everything to achieve that.

Nevertheless, if we zoom out and take an overall look. It is absolutely that TikTok, even if unintended, they do get the full benefit of increasing the screen time of users and more money that they took from the streamers' money-making scheme.

[jackg]

I'd imagine tiktok has gifts worth different amounts depending on where you live. If you're as likely to deposit and withdraw gifts (for example in Europe, Australia or the US) you could probably expect the tiktok to be taking less of a cut and giving you about the 70% that's normally quoted. If you were living somewhere like Syria I could then see the gifts might be worth less because of the area you're in and the greater chance o someone withdrawing gifts than one of them depositing gifts (perhaps they're "smart" with this too like being able to locate poorer areas everywhere and keeping their gifts lower than where they'd be expected to pay higher.

This is a similar (but worse) strategy of how goods in rural areas/villiages are much more expensive than cities because of the size of population and ease of transportation (even though people living in cities were often wealthier when this was a thing).

I'm more concerned at how many people are throwing money at these sob stories without the realization that their money never even gets seen by the subjects in the video suffering from poverty. The fees that impact the donations are part of the problem, but the bigger problem is social media grifters exploiting suffering children for their gain. Tiktok is a malignant tumor on society.

Are there good places to donate money to these days though too? A lot of charities have issues with being inefficient, volunteers being hard to audit or their attempts to receive more donations than they need to to fund campaigns (such as claiming work they haven't done as their own). It'd probably be hard to go out to places and actually work out what help to prioritise to people too. It's easy to help local organisations that are normally very open and make themselves easy to examine but aside from that I'm not sure.

[pooya87]

The hypocrisy of this coming out of BBC is absurd. TickTok is Chinese based so they are allowed to write such an article but they are never allowed to write any articles about the terrorism that has been advertised on social media outlets like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook over the past 3 weeks, all 100% allowed by these platforms and the governments as long as they did it in Persian encouraging Iranian protesters to go violent.
Here is one of many examples of an asshole posting a guide about how to make Molotov Cocktails on Instagram: https://imgur.com/fzMLA70 (the guide is censored for obvious reasons). It is worth knowing majority of these individuals inciting terrorism on these platforms live in London. Some of them currently work at BBC...

[stompix]

I see this as a way TikTok is exploiting poor people with the centralized tradable virtual assets on the platform. What about you, is this not an exploit while TikTok is saying it is the people in the camp that are exploiting the minors (or let us use donators)?

Read the ending:

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.

This is why I like bitcoin, no central authority is involved, rather than virtual assets that can only be converted to fiat on TikTok.

And? How can you reach those and how they can reach you and how can you multiply those by millions? You will still need a central platform that brings together donors and people who need donations, and who is going to pay for that platform, for the servers for the bandwidth? TikTok is a business, it needs to make money otherwise they go bankrupt like Myspace, Vine or Friendster.

Look at the real picture, if it weren't for TikTok nobody would know a thing about those people and their stories in the first place!

Hamid, one of the TikTok middlemen in the camps, told the BBC he had sold his livestock to pay for a mobile phone, SIM card and wi-fi connection to work with families on TikTok. He now broadcasts with 12 different families, for several hours a day.
Hamid said he uses TikTok to help families make a living. He pays them most of the profits, minus his running costs, he said.
Like the other middlemen, Hamid said he was supported by "live agencies" in China, who work directly with TikTok.

Hmm, I have a feeling somebody else is doing the real exploiting borderland human trafficking here...
 

[uneng]

Any children's exploitation is disgusting, especially like it is done on this awful platform (or social media?) Tik Tok. Besides the usual worthless dancing brainless content to lobotomize the masses (using kids too quite often) they also feature children in precarious situations, facing the consequences of war, hunger and poverty to go viral and feed the audience which somehow enjoys this kind of content. After all they ask for money, although it's not clear how it is being distributed exactly. Very shady practice, but common on third world realms and in the depths of internet.

Tik Tok is full of businessmen/managers who use and exploit others' images, especially uneducated ones, for their own benefit, like the character Stromboli in Pinocchio's story.

[Hydrogen]

Incidents like these illustrate the need for a politically agnostic unit of exchange like bitcoin. Which doesn't allow for platforms to divert funds. Or for political parties to inject themselves into revenue streams as middle men.

The fees listed do not include taxes. Which they might not afford to pay with what tiktok left them.

Segments of islam claim usury in banking industries and finance go against their religion. Syria being a muslim dominated portion of the world. I wonder how they reconcile events like these with their faith.

It is possible that bitcoin is closest to the ideal standard for muslims. It is designed to prevent usury and ideology which deviate from their faith.

Mass adoption for crypto appear to have stalled in the middle east. Possibly due to lack of cellphone and payment support. But considering crypto has done ok for itself in africa. Perhaps it is only a matter of time.

[Zlantann]

This is why I like bitcoin, no central authority is involved, rather than virtual assets that can only be converted to fiat on TikTok.

I see this as a way TikTok is exploiting poor people with the centralized tradable virtual assets on the platform. What about you, is this not an exploit while TikTok is saying it is the people in the camp that are exploiting the minors (or let us use donators)?

It is quite disheartening to see how children, people living with disabilities, and refugees are used as modern-day slaves. This is a clear example of the failure of centralized authority and how it promotes exploitation. These people are exploited because of a lack of information. They are falling for these exploitative middlemen because it is the only option they know. In fact, most of them don't know that they are being used or exploited and they are very happy with the peanuts they are given. If they had gotten the information about Bitcoin or other donator platforms, they wouldn't have used TikTok.

Mass adoption for crypto appear to have stalled in the middle east. Possibly due to lack of cellphone and payment support. But considering crypto has done ok for itself in africa. Perhaps it is only a matter of time.

Lack of cellphone and payment support is not the only challenge that has led to the stalling of Bitcoin development in the Middle East. This is because they have access to these facilities more than Africa yet they are far behind the latter in Bitcoin adoption and use. Middle East societies are very conservative and difficult to accept change. Accepting innovation seems to take a longer period in the Middle East. Most of these nations are governed not based on democratic principles, hence the government limits the citizen's freedom.

There is a need for the spread of Bitcoin education in every nook and cranny of the world so that people would know that there is a better alternative.

[Techkoy407]

With the development of the era and technology, entertainment facilities are also increasing.
for example

• YouTube
• TikTok
• Netflix

and many more.

and there's a lot of creator content popping up,
automatically a lot of creator content is streaming, and of course there is a gift feature to the content creator,
well here many people give gifts to the content creator, and in my opinion it is not coercion,
Because of what?
because the content creator provides entertainment that many people love,

then for people who can afford to buy gifts and he likes the content creator, he will definitely give a gift to the content creator.

and the problem of withdrawing less money,
it has become the terms and conditions of the application,
because it's like,

application owner who owns the building

and the content creator who rented one of the spaces in the building,

so I don't think it's a problem, because it's their business, between the application owner and the content creator.

[Lucius]

Hmm, I have a feeling somebody else is doing the real exploiting borderland human trafficking here...

This is nothing new in today's world where social networks are widely used for various dubious purposes, and unfortunately many children are forced to do such things for their masters. I remember that in the past, various poor people went from door to door asking for money (and many were actually just pretending), and today they open a profile on FB, write some heartbreaking story and wait for naive people to take the bait.

Unfortunately, I have long since stopped believing in most of what I see online when it comes to any kind of donations, I only help those to whom I can directly give help. Of course there are always exceptions, but there are very few that I believe work for the benefit of children, without taking part of the donations into their own pockets.

[hugeblack]

I did not download TikTok and started reducing social media, but it is the first time that I know that TikTok provide financial services.
In general, I know some people from Syria, and some of them send money in Bitcoin, as the war stopped some time ago, the cost in Bitcoin is about 10% to 25%, meaning $100 will reach $90 to $75.

TikTok is more expensive, but they are good at advertising.
If Bitcoin is combined with TikTok, things will become better, but the company will not make profits.

[Findingnemo]

Not only tiktok every social platform is not giving what the creators are earning, they just give rewards from the earnings and the ranges varies from country to country and also from platform to platform. Even in yoututbe the superchat enabled options get 70% and youtube takes the 30% but the reason they are saying is with their platform only they manages to earn this which seems valid as well.

Any company or central authority will never work for free that is why more people have to utilize bitcoin like technology especially for donation so the receiver will get all of it and its already proven a long back with wikipedia donation.

[savetheFORUM]

Yes, TikTok sucks, but the problem here is that the children living in refugee camps don't realize that they are using the wrong platform to ask for donations. They could use Gofundme or some other platform that is dedicated to funding charity projects. I can't recommend a certain platform, because all online charity platforms have certain cons and limitations. TikTok isn't supposed to be used for charity. TikTok is supposed to be used for fun and consuming cringeworthy content. Putting the blame entirely on TikTok is kinda misleading here. TikTok is a business that wants profits, just like any other business. They have their Terms of Service and the users, who singed up there have agreed to those Terms and Service.

This is why it's important to check the terms and policy of the platform before we start using it and if the platform fail to fulfill its promises then we can report them but now that they are aware of this issue, they will probably switch on a better platform to seek for donations. Gofundme is a popular one but I heard there are people who have an issue on it before. I think this is the one where the funds are being frozen because it was being ordered by another party.

This is the problem of being centralized. OP is right that crypto such as bitcoin are always better because no one can restrict us once the funds are already transferred. There also less charges and transactions are fast.

[hyudien]

It's hard to avoid these kinds of things because they are also driven by need. But I fully believe that if the government pays more attention to what its citizens need to live in prosperity, adequate health services, then the level of exploitation on social media to look for some gifts, especially on TikTok, might decrease. Moreover, social media has now opened the way to reveal all information and people who do Live Streaming do not hesitate to obey what the audience wants as long as they are paid with some gifts. It's a shame that social media has exploited or rather stripped people without needing to force it in exchange for a dime.

[Fortify]

Let me make few quotes from this BBC news that makes me emotional because of the way poor people in camp in Syria were exploited by TikTok.

With TikTok declining to say how much it takes from gifts, the BBC ran an experiment to track where the money goes.

A 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.

This is why I like bitcoin, no central authority is involved, rather than virtual assets that can only be converted to fiat on TikTok.

I see this as a way TikTok is exploiting poor people with the centralized tradable virtual assets on the platform. What about you, is this not an exploit while TikTok is saying it is the people in the camp that are exploiting the minors (or let us use donators)?

You're making some rather ridiculous leaps across different topics. Tiktok is clearly benefiting greatly from excessive fees and people being exploited in this manner, however they do bring a small amount of benefit to the equation in fairness. They have huge reach as, for whatever reason, many people choose to use this platform and it allows any content creators to get exposure to the highest degree. If you were to set this up on an independent website and tried to get the same amount of viewers who are driving the donations, then you would have an extremely tough time to raise anywhere near the same amount of money. However the fees should definitely be a fraction of what they are now and the actual people making the content deserve the biggest proportion - middlemen should be monitored heavily too.

[bitgolden]

This is where it could actually work, the tiktokers could end up saying they could accept gifts in crypto, and take the whole thing, and I am sure it’s illegal to do that for tiktok, they may ban you, but it is allowed to share your other links, with like linktree or something, which means you could have your crypto account there as well.

This is however not the solution, from $106 gifted to only receiving $19 is not acceptable, first of all the insane 70% from tiktok itself is just way too much, that alone is more than half of the money gone to tiktok, that’s not acceptable. If they took only 10% that means it would have been 90+ dollars, then you could have another 10% cut to turn it from tiktok gifts to cash in your pocket, and you would have a great deal of money in your pocket.

[el kaka22]

You know what the main problem is? The lack of competition. TikTok has done something that nobody else could, it gives audience to people who didn't get themselves heard before, and direct connection to money for them as well, crypto could have been a great part of it, but hasn't been and that’s the problem we are facing right now.

This is why it’s a lot smarter if we could somehow get competition from other social media places where they could see people who are suffering and not just hear about it, a tweet from someone who is living in these situations is not as believable as a tiktok live video of it, that’s why lack of competition forced this situation.