Blog
“Perverted Incentives”
Categories: M. W. Bassford, Meditations
I'm hard to horrify these days, but this morning, I read an article from Forbes that did the trick. If you have a strong stomach, you can find it at https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/how-tiktok-live-became-a-strip-club-filled-with-15-year-olds/ar-AAWEiIw. To summarize, it describes how perverts online are able to use TikTok Live to pay teenage girls for sexually suggestive behavior.
Naturally, TikTok condemns these practices, and they use various forms of content moderation in an attempt to prevent the sexual exploitation of children. However, TikTok has a problem. They make money when users exchange money over TikTok, and they have every reason to make the exchange of money as easy and appealing as possible.
For instance, the creeps are able to pay girls without using anything as crass as digits on a screen. Instead, they send money using cute little emojis: hearts, flowers, cartoon animals, and the like. I have a 12-year-old daughter. I understand all too well how appealing such a mode of payment would be to girls. You get money and you get adorable at the same time! Tragically, the cuteness conceals from the girls the danger and degradation that lie before them.
To put things another way, TikTok has a perverse incentive. On the one hand, they certainly don't want to be involved in child abuse. On the other hand, though, they make the most money from a platform that makes exploitation easy.
Many of the safeguards that TikTok has enacted rely on users. For example, users younger than 16 are prohibited from hosting live streams, and users younger than 18 cannot receive money. Sounds airtight, right?
Sadly, this is not the case. Even if teen girls aren't wise enough to see the traps in their path, they certainly are clever and tech-savvy enough to evade such rudimentary restrictions. All they have to do is lie about their age when they sign up, and they can host all the streams and receive all the money that they want to.
It's certainly appealing to have all that money to spend on clothes and coffee, and I would guess that many girls, especially those from troubled backgrounds, would find the attention appealing too. According to the Forbes article, these livestreams can attract audiences of thousands. If you're an insecure fourteen-year-old, how would you like to have thousands of men telling you that you're pretty? The girls have perverse incentives too.
For parents, this is grim news, and it underscores an unpleasant truth. We cannot trust social-media giants to protect our children, not even a little bit. The people in charge of all these platforms don't want to abet evil, but they want to make money more than they want to be righteous. Like Pilate, they will not intervene effectively because the costs of intervention are too high.
This is yet another reason why children under 18 should not have Internet-capable devices in private spaces. I understand that many children in public schools are required to have Internet- capable phones in order to do their class work. However, when children aren't doing class work, those phones need to be with Mom and Dad. We are naive enough that we are mainly worried about our children watching porn, but in truth, watching porn may be the least of the spiritual dangers online.
