Researchers accuse TikTok of promoting the sex industry to girls

TikTok is helping to promote and normalise the sex industry to girls by allowing adult creators to covertly market pornographic content, according to the Guardian. Researchers studied non-explicit videos posted on the platform over the course of a year by some of the most popular young female performers on OnlyFans. [1]

The Guardian reported that these performers, described by researchers as sexfluencers, buried coded references to pornography within girly lifestyle content. The videos frequently highlighted a wealthy lifestyle to appeal to followers while directing them to adult material uploaded on third-party sites such as OnlyFans. [1]

TikTok is a short-form video platform hosted by the Chinese social networking service ByteDance, though the service itself is blocked in mainland China and Hong Kong. The platform has previously drawn public scrutiny over addictive design mechanics that prioritize engagement and affect adolescent mental health. [2][3]

The latest findings add to regulatory pressures facing the social media platform. As FTMQ News reported earlier, the European Commission accused TikTok of violating the Digital Services Act because its recommendation algorithm creates harmful rabbit hole effects, a charge that TikTok rejected as fundamentally inaccurate. [4]