"‘Profiting from misery’: how TikTok makes money from child begging livestreams", 6 April 2025

Three young children huddle in front of a camera, cross-legged and cupping their hands. “Please support me. We are very poor,” says a boy, staring down the lens.

They appear to be in a mud-brick hut in Afghanistan, living in extreme poverty. But their live stream is reaching viewers in the UK and worldwide – via TikTok Live.

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TikTok says it bans child begging and other forms of begging it considers exploitative, and says it has strict policies on users who go live.

But an Observer investigation has found the practice widespread. Begging live streams are actively promoted by the algorithm and TikTok profits from the content, taking fees and commission of up to 70%.

Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, called the trend a “shocking development” and accused TikTok and middlemen of “profiting from people’s misery”. “Taking a cut of people’s suffering is nothing short of digital predation. I urge TikTok to take immediate action and enforce its own policies on exploitative begging and seriously question the ‘commission’ it is taking from the world’s most vulnerable people,” he said.

Jeffrey DeMarco, digital harm expert at Save the Children, said: “The documented practices represent significant abuses and immediate action must be taken to ensure platforms no longer allow, or benefit directly or indirectly, from content such as this.”

Analysis conducted between January and April 2025 found evidence of live-begging and related behaviour in countries including Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt and Kenya.

Many of the live streams showed families begging in domestic settings. But some streams appeared to bear the hallmarks of organised begging.

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Launched in August 2020, TikTok Live is a section of the app where creators can broadcast to viewers in real time. According to TikTok, 100 million people went live in 2024, reaching “billions of users”, who can engage with the creator in real time by sending comments or gifts. Streams are promoted to TikTok users through a dedicated live feed and can reach millions of people.

Novita Anggraeni, an Indonesia-based social inclusion expert at the charity Care International, said many creators used TikTok Live to “show their talent” or “connect with people”. It is commonly used by people who film themselves singing, dancing, playing video games, painting or cooking. But, she said, it was increasingly being misused by those who saw it as a “shortcut to making money”, and that “harmful” videos showing begging and related behaviour had “very rapidly grown”. “It’s a whole new form of exploitation,” she added.

She said the streams were driven by poverty and poor digital literacy and that it was not always easy to identify whether people were being coerced. She said apparent victims often denied they were being exploited and said it was “a collaboration to earn money”. But she said there was a “high risk” of abuse by organised begging networks which control access to earnings and organise filming of multiple families.

Marwa Fatafta, from the digital rights organisation Access Now, said the way TikTok Live was designed incentivised begging and risky behaviour because engagement boosts rewards. “At the same time, TikTok is not making enough effort to ensure that this unintended outcome is being addressed,” Fatafta said.

She warned against a blanket approach to moderating begging content, which could penalise people needing humanitarian support in “crisis or conflict-stricken areas”, and is concerned that in some regions, online begging has led to a repressive response from governments.

But she said more needed to be done to “tackle organised begging and exploitation”, and urged TikTok to “hire investigative teams”. ...

This weekend, TikTok said it had taken firm action, including removing accounts flagged by the Observer. It said its policies banned exploitative begging during live streams, including begging that “exploits children or vulnerable people”. “Any live content which features children begging for gifts is not allowed on TikTok,” a spokesperson said.

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Maya Lahav, researcher in the Centre for Criminology at Oxford, who previously advised tech companies on detecting exploitative cyber-begging, said moderating live streams was resource-heavy and a “huge challenge”. There were ethical issues around whether to remove content or not. “It’s not like other types of influencers aren’t using their children for profit all the time,” she said.

But she said there were serious concerns about human rights abuses, particularly where third parties were involved or those featured were too young, or ill, to consent. “The crux of it is, when does it become exploitation? That’s the balance they need to tread.”