On These Apps, the Dark Promise of Mothers Sexually Abusing Children

On These Apps, the Dark Promise of Mothers Sexually Abusing... #csam #streaming #news #videochat

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/us/child-abuse-apple-google-apps.html?unlocked_article_code=1.gk4.iTvi.7U6BlEENp6-Y&smid=url-share

On These Apps, the Dark Promise of Mothers Sexually Abusing Children

Smartphone apps downloaded from Apple and Google can allow parents and other abusers to connect with pedophiles who pay to watch — and direct — criminal behavior.

The New York Times
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.
How is Bigo linked to ByteDance?
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.
So was anything in your original comment actually true?
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