TikTok makes profit from charities  

He takes a percentage from people who need money

Syrian families in refugee camps are using TikTok to ask for money so they can survive. Guys, they livestream for hours, begging for digital gifts that they can redeem for cash.

But a BBC report reveals that TikTok keeps a percentage of this money, sometimes as much as 70%. Livestreams of this kind can fetch up to $1,000 an hour, but the BBC found that the money ending up in the hands of refugees is only a small percentage of that.

TikTok emphasizes that this type of content violates the terms of use of the platform as it is considered begging, while emphasizing that its commission from digital gifts is significantly less than 70%, without clarifying the exact percentage.

The BBC report also reveals that there is usually a middleman involved in these livestreams, who provides the phones and equipment and also takes a significant percentage of the profits. In fact, these middlemen work for companies that have a commercial relationship with TikTok in China and the Middle East. These companies are part of TikTok’s global strategy to recruit livestreamers and encourage young people to spend time on the app.

So because TikTok’s algorithm suggests content based on the geographic origin of the phone number, the middlemen used UK SIM cards as they found that people from the UK were the most generous with their offers.

The BBC spent 5 months monitoring 30 TikTok accounts that live streamed from refugee camps in Syria, and then a reporter contacted those companies saying he lived in those camps. Create an account and go live. BBC staff in London sent him digital gifts from another account, worth $106. At the end of the livestream, the “Syrian” journalist’s account read $33, so TikTok kept 69% of the value of the gifts. Another 10% was deducted from the $33 when he transferred it to an account to cash it out. The middleman asked for 35%, leaving just $19 for the reporter.

It should be noted that TikTok has as a rule that someone has 1,000 followers before they can go live, but in this particular case they are livestreaming even accounts with 30 followers. TikTok refused to comment on the BBC report and banned all the accounts that were mentioned.