Thirty pages of uncovered documents in a lawsuit against TikTok owner ByteDance suggest the company has aggressively pursued children’s use of its app despite knowing its widespread dangers including possible sexual exploitation, according to an exclusive NPR report, which confirms previous reporting by Forbes.
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The documents, discovered by Kentucky Public Radio after they were improperly redacted, include summaries of internal studies and communications between TikTok executives as they discuss responses to crises and ways to improve the app.
A Forbes report in 2022 showing TikTok’s live-streaming platform crowded with viewers urging and paying young girls to perform acts that “toe the line of child pornography” caused ByteDance to open an investigation that confirmed “a significant” number of adults messaging underage streamers about stripping live, and in just one month users sent 1 million “gifts” to underage children engaged in this “transactional behavior,” according to the documents.
The investigation prompted one TikTok official, according to NPR, to report that “a major challenge with Live business is that the content that gets the highest engagement may not be the content we want on our platform.” forbes.com
