After confirming the authenticity of the Bigo livestreamer with the authorities, The Times searched the Apple and Google app stores for other video chat apps. Reporters identified a sample of more than 80 apps that advertised children before stopping the search. They later contacted Homeland Security Investigations, the government’s main law enforcement group for international exploitation, for comment.
“The number one customer base paying for this abuse is in the United States,” the agent said. “It’s not like they are abused once a day. It’s 50 men getting 50 separate shows. They’ll wake up these kids in the middle of the night to be abused.”
Asked about The Times’s sample of offending apps, Mr. Sainz said a majority had been detected during the company’s standard review process, with an additional 20 taken down after an internal investigation in response to The Times’s findings.
Fair question I should clarify: ByteDance was using a number of LLCs at the time to (my understanding) find the best / most addictive TikTok-style app. I believe TikTok was around at the time but it was called something different. Looking into this briefly again, it seems Bigo isn’t directly connected to ByteDance, but the exact style/format of app is apparently being abused by multiple companies across countries now.
So was anything in your original comment actually true?
Sure, everything except the direct connection between Bigo specifically and ByteDance. Like I said originally, there were numerous apps that I found platforming this behavior, and TikTok’s parent company was responsible for most of them. This was several years ago (~5) and I’m going off memory here, so I do apologize for the inconsistency
TikTok used to be Musical.ly and it was far more niche than what TikTok is today. It was populated primarily by tweens and it was for making musical lip-sync videos.
TikTok was Douyin, which *acquired * musical.ly to get into the US market.