In the middle of the year, they were especially widespread on TikTok and Co.: Syrian children in camps with dirty faces and frayed clothes begging at the camera flooded many food. As the BBC has now discovered, these streams work with a system – here are the actors:
The families
It is mainly mothers who can be seen with their children. They clap, wave, cry into the camera, “Like, please share, please donate.” Mona Ali Al-Karim and her six daughters spend hours every day on the floor of their tent in front of the tripod with their smartphone.
Her husband was killed in a rocket attack. She uses the TikTok donations to raise money to pay for her blind daughter’s eye surgery. You can donate so-called ‘gifts’ via TikTok. These are purely virtual, but have a certain value that Mona can then exchange for cash at the local money changer.
the middlemen
The middlemen are behind the camera. They are often residents of these camps themselves and own the smartphones with which the begging flows are created.
So does Hamid. He sold all his herd animals to buy a cell phone, SIM card and internet connection. Now he sets up live streams for 12 families, manages their accounts and their income (more on that later). It is supported by so-called live agencies.
the agencies
These agencies usually come from China or the Middle East and work directly with TikTok. You will receive a certain percentage of the donations depending on the length of the streams. Conversely, this means that it is in the interests of the agencies that the flows last as long as possible.
For Hamid, the agencies are the point of contact if there are problems: “They help us if we have problems with the app. They unlock locked accounts. We give them the profile name and photo and they create the account for us.”
The platform
TikTok itself actually “only” provides the streaming platform and the infrastructure for donations. For this they withhold a certain, officially unspecified amount from the donations. The BBC ran the test: Mohammed, a reporter, reports to an agency from a camp in Syria. He would like to start a donation stream – soon after he has a working account. During the stream, his British colleagues donate a “gift” worth a whopping 100 Swiss francs.
However, Mohammed only gets about 32 francs in his account, almost 70 percent less. So after TikTok extorts most of the donation, the middleman and money changer also get their shares. In the end, only 18 francs remain for Mohammed.
Under TikTok rules, begging is prohibited. However, when the BBC reported 30 such accounts through the app’s internal reporting system, “no policy violations” were found.
