BBC investigation: how TikTok is making money from videos of refugee families asking for help from Syria

A BBC News investigation found that the social media giant TikTok is receiving up to 70% of donations made through its app to hundreds of displaced families living in refugee camps in Syria.

Every day, Mona Ali al Karim and her six daughters go live on TikTok, begging viewers to give them virtual gifts.

The family sits on the floor of their tent for hours, repeating the few English phrases they know: “Please like, please share, please give away.”

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Mona’s husband was killed in an airstrike. Since jobs are scarce in the camps, she has been using TikTok live streams to raise money for an operation for her daughter Sharifa, who is blind.

The gifts they ask for are virtual, but they cost real money and can be withdrawn from the app as cash.

Viewers of live streams can send animated gifts to reward or “tip” creators for content. They range from digital roses, which cost pennies, to lions or virtual universes, which cost around $500.

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As the gifts appear on the screen, Mona’s youngest daughter jumps for joy. “Thank you,” she yells, “I love you!”

Spectators can gift a lion for $500.

Mona’s family is one of hundreds begging on the platform. Earlier this year, similar videos began appearing in the feeds of TikTok users around the world. While some think it’s a scam, others have been more understanding.

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TikTok influencer and former professional rugby player Keith Mason donated $330 in TikTok gifts to a family and encouraged his nearly one million followers to do the same.

“The kids seemed so happy, and even though the man had his legs and arm blown off, he was the most positive guy you could meet,” Keith said.

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Behind the camera

However, there was something wrong. How is it that so many people who had lost their homes in the Syrian civil war they suddenly had phones, internet and TikTok accounts to broadcast live every day?

Mason says 50,000 people watched the TikTok live he did with a Syrian family.

Syrian journalist Mohammed Abdullah told us that he recognized one of the camps in the videos, located near Idlib in northwestern Syria.

We asked him to come visit him. When he arrived, he immediately found several families like Mona’s begging on TikTok Live.

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He also met Hamid. Known in the camps as a “TikTok middleman”Hamid told him that he sold his cattle to pay for a mobile phone, a SIM card and a Wi-Fi connection, and started working with families on TikTok.

Hamid does live broadcasts for different families in the camp.

Now he broadcasts with 12 different families, for several hours a day.

“We go to TikTok Live and receive gifts. Every 100 roses gives me $1,” he explained.

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Hamid says he uses TikTok to help families make a living. He told us that he pays them most of the profits, minus the running costs.

Our team followed over 300 live accounts from camps in Syria. We discovered that many earned more than $1,000 an hour in gifts, but families in the camps say they receive a small fraction of the money donated to them.

Dowkan worked with a different broker and says he felt exploited.

Dowkan Hamdan Al-Khodr wanted to raise money for his daughter’s heart operation. After eight days of asking for gifts on TikTok Lives, she was only given $14.

So where does the money go?

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The slice of TikTok

In June, we wrote to TikTok to ask how much they receive from donated gifts on their app. They didn’t tell us.

To find out, we live streamed from a TikTok account we set up in Syria. We sent $106 worth of TikTok gifts from another account in London. We were the only ones to give.

TikTok takes the biggest slice.

After the live stream ended, our Syrian test account balance was $33. TikTok had taken 69% of the value of the gifts.

After the experiment, we went to withdraw our $33 at a local money transfer shop. He took 10% more for his services. TikTok intermediaries like Hamid would have kept 35% of the rest.

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This would have left our ‘family’ with only $19 of the $106 donated. Many families told us that they are paid much less.

Agencies

Hamid and other brokers provide the equipment, but need help setting up accounts to get up and running on TikTok. We discovered that they are being supported by “live agencies” in Chinawhich work directly with TikTok.

“They help us if we have any problems with the app. They unblock the blocked accounts. We give them the name of the page, the profile picture and they open the account,” Hamid explained.

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These agencies, also known in China as “live streaming guilds,” are a growing part of TikTok’s global business strategy to bring live streamers to the platform.

Are hired by TikTok to help content creators produce more engaging live streams.

This encourages more people to use the platform longer, which attracts more advertising and giveaways, which then increases TikTok’s earnings.

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The agencies we spoke with say that TikTok pays them a commission based on the length of live streams and the value of gifts received.

“Child exploitation”

The emphasis on length means that kids will be broadcasting live for several hours at a time.

Marwa Fatafta of the digital rights organization Access Now says these videos are contrary to TikTok’s own policies to “prevent harm, endangerment or exploitation” of minors on the platform.

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“TikTok clearly states that users cannot explicitly request gifts, so this is a clear violation of its own terms of service, as well as the rights of these people”, he points out.

She acknowledges that people have a right to share their stories online “to try to seek support and compassion”, but says these videos “they lack dignity and are humiliating.”

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“Exploitation of begging”

Some families in the camp sell scraps they find in the dump to make a living.

To test how rigorously TikTok enforces its child protection policies, we used the app’s built-in feature to report over 30 accounts with children begging. At the time, TikTok said “there was no breach” in either account.

When the BBC contacted TikTok directly, banned all accounts. The company was not interviewed, but said in a statement:

“We are deeply concerned about the information and allegations brought to our attention by the BBC, and have taken swift and rigorous action. This type of content is not allowed on our platformand we are further strengthening our global policies on the exploitation of begging.”

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We asked TikTok how much they take from donated gifts. They insisted they take less than 70%, but refused to say how much. We repeated our experiment with accounts in the UK and Syria that were not registered with agencies, and found that TikTok took around 66% each time.

TikTok is the fastest growing social media app in the world, with over 3.9 billion downloads. He has earned more than $6.2 billion through the expenses that are made within the application.

Support for families

We reached out to various charities working in Syria to ensure that the families we spoke to were supported as an alternative to making money on TikTok Live.

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A local non-profit organization called Takaful Alsham said that will provide basic supplies for families for the next three months. The children will receive help finding schools and their school expenses will be covered.

But for many in the camps, there are few options other than asking for money online. Hundreds of families continue to livestream every day, and most of the money donated still goes to TikTok.

Additional Research and Reporting: Runako Celina, Cyrus Chan, Ned Davies, and Katy Ling.

Source: Elcomercio