Technology

60023 readers

2603 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

130

On These Apps, the Dark Promise of Mothers Sexually Abusing Children (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 1 week ago by Aatube@kbin.melroy.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Sinuousity@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

A few years ago I conducted an internal months long investigation into Bigo Live and about a dozen remarkably similar apps. They were cookie cutter template apps with slight tweaks to test market trends and engagement, all produced by one single corporate entity: ByteDance. While sharing my findings with the team did result in new child endangerment policies being enacted internally, it is absolutely disgusting to see these apps are still at large, getting worse, and the massive tech company I worked for did essentially nothing to help externally.

EDIT: I should note the content I encountered was not abuse, but very apparent and out in the open grooming, in apps where a user's location would often be shown publicly

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

How is Bigo linked to ByteDance?

[–] Sinuousity@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 5 points 1 week ago

TikTok was Douyin, which *acquired * musical.ly to get into the US market.

[–] technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So was anything in your original comment actually true?

[–] Sinuousity@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

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