TikTok Earned Revenue From Child Streams, Depositions Show

TikTok generated what employees described as “significant revenue” from live video broadcasts featuring children, even as the platform’s own rules prohibited minors from appearing in them, according to court depositions detailed by NPR.

The financial dimension of the company’s child safety record has emerged as a central issue across hundreds of lawsuits currently targeting TikTok. Workers told investigators that executives were explicitly warned about teenagers appearing in live streams where viewers could purchase in-app “gifts,” raising alarms about grooming and exploitation. A 2022 Forbes investigation into teens stripping during TikTok Live sessions prompted internal acknowledgment from safety staff that the company had prior knowledge of such content, the depositions show.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment and did not provide an on-the-record statement to NPR.

The litigation is exposing structural design choices that allowed minors to evade age restrictions. Employees identified a loophole permitting underage users to bypass TikTok’s age verification by registering through Facebook, Instagram or Google accounts. Testimony also revealed a “hidden link” within the application that let teenagers silently disconnect themselves from TikTok’s “family pairing” parental supervision tool.

These technical vulnerabilities carry direct implications for the broader legal exposure facing social media companies. The volume of pending cases against TikTok mirrors earlier waves of litigation against tobacco manufacturers and opioid distributors, where plaintiffs successfully argued that corporate profits were prioritized over known public health risks. TikTok has settled some of its cases, including claims alleging the app was engineered to be addictive.

Algorithmic recommendation systems remain under separate scrutiny in the filings. NPR cites a report written by Eric Han, TikTok’s former head of safety, dating back to 2020, which warned that the platform’s algorithm could push users into “rabbit holes” of harmful material, including posts related to suicide. Han’s report identified a “real contagion effect” associated with such content.

Documents surfaced in a lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general reveal that TikTok introduced a feature in 2021 intended to disrupt repetitive patterns of specific content types. The company withheld the tool from millions of users in an apparent test. A teenager included in that experiment died by suicide after being exposed to repeated self-harm material, according to the court records.