In 2022, it was reported that TikTok Live, a live-stream feature of the video-sharing media app, was becoming a breeding ground for the sexual exploitation of young girls. Now, a BBC investigation has revealed that the app has been profiting off of sexual livestreams performed by many Kenyan teens, some as young as 15. The report contributed to an urgent and much-debated social-political topic: content moderation and child safety measures on social platforms, specifically those with a young user base.

TikTok takes a cut of about 70 per cent from all livestream transactions, meaning that the company directly benefits even from illicit and offensive content live videos conducted on its platform.

And while the app is supposed to impose age restrictions for hosting livestreams and sending or receiving gifts, much of the content is slipping through the cracks, leading to young adults and children participating in online transactions with adults that involve virtual sexual favours, Forbes found.

In a cover story called How TikTok Live Became ‘A Strip Club Filled With 15-Year-Olds the business-focused news organisation revealed the extent of the crisis two years ago.

It’s “the digital equivalent of going down the street to a strip club filled with 15-year-olds,” Leah Plunkett, an assistant dean at Harvard Law School told the publication.

Two years later, this sensitive and illegal activity still has shown no signs of subsiding. In fact, a lot of young women abroad have become increasingly vulnerable to this practice.

According to the BBC, live streams from Kenya, especially those featuring young women dancing, are very popular on the platform. And over several nights in a row, its investigative team found up to a dozen streams in which women performers danced suggestively, watched by hundreds of people around the world.

“Inbox me for kinembe guys. Tap, tap,” the performers say on repeat, with ‘Kinembe’ being the Swahili word for ‘clitoris’.

The BBC noted that coded sexual slang was frequently used to advertise sexual services.

The many active users, on the other hand, will use the comments to urge young girls to perform more daring acts that are akin to child pornography. Those who oblige are rewarded with TikTok gifts, which can be redeemed for money, or off-platform payments to Venmo, PayPal or Cash App accounts that users list in their TikTok profiles.

The insidious and widespread presence of this content shows how the platform has largely failed in installing safety measures to protect minors from harassment and virtual abuse.

The platform is allowing minors to openly promote and negotiate payment for more explicit content that can then be sent via other messaging platforms.

The trade of child pornography on TikTok, thus, isn’t happening behind closed doors anymore, but in broad daylight for anyone to witness. One no longer needs to search to find this material because creators are openly using the platform’s tool to offer it to a highly eager and engaged clientele.

Kenya is a hotspot for this abuse, says the charity ChildFund Kenya, compounded by a young demographic and widespread internet usage. The African continent as a whole also has poor online moderation compared to Western countries, the charity added. This is currently exacerbating the extent of this assault, and posing the question of what both TikTok and the Kenyan government will do to combat this urgent and pervasive child safety issue.