TikTok 'directs child accounts to pornographic content within a few clicks'

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/03/tiktok-child-accounts-pornographic-content-accessible

57•01-_-•1h ago

Comments

dentemple•1h ago

> After a “small number of clicks” the researchers encountered pornographic content ranging from women flashing to penetrative sex.

I (40m) don't think I've ever seen literal flashing or literal porn on TikTok, and my algorithm does like to throw in thirst content between my usual hobby stuff.

Are they making the claim that showing porn is a normal behavior for TikTok's algorithm overall, or are they saying that this is something that specifically pervasive with child accounts?

mothballed•1h ago

Does TikTok direct what you see based on what other accounts you interact with are interested in? I would expect teenagers to have a different interest profile than your average 40 year old. I would expect algorithms to more or less unwittingly direct you to the kind of stuff your peers were interested in.

netruk44•1h ago

TikTok’s recommendations are based off as much info as it can get, really.

Approximate location, age, mobile OS/browser, your contacts, which TikTok links you open, who generated the links you open, TikTok search history, how long it takes you to swipe to the next video on the for you page, etc.

I don’t think it's really possible to say what TikTok’s algorithm does “naturally”. There’s so many influencing factors to it. (Beyond the promoted posts and ads which people pay TikTok to put in your face)

If you sign up to TikTok with an Android and tell it you’re 16, you’re gonna get recommended what the other 16 year olds with Androids in your nearby area (based on IP address) are watching.

yapyap•1h ago

after reading some of the article it seems to me that they’re saying that on a restricted account thats got the bday of a 13 year old with the suggested search terms tiktok shows and a few clicks you can see actual porn.

ChromaticPanic•23m ago

I'm on an unrestricted account and I can't find actual porn. Sounds like this article is rage bait, claiming women in swim wear as porn.

thehodge•1h ago

Agreed, I've never even seen boobs on TikTok...

elevation•45m ago

A soccer mom I know shared that she once tried TikTok. Within seconds of installing the app, the algorithm was showing nsfw content. She uninstalled it.

I assume that the offending content was popular but hadn’t been flagged yet and that the algorithm was just measuring her interest in a trending theme; it seems like it would be bad for business to intentionally run off mainstream users like that.

IanCal•1h ago

Really? I've signed up to bluesky and tiktok and on both have seen literal porn extremely early without engaging directly (such as liking or responding, speed of scrolling could be something).

InitialLastName•37m ago

All of these apps are 100% using your scroll speed/how long you spend engaging with the content as a data point. After all, "time spent engaging with the content" is the revenue driver.

gadders•1h ago

Yeah, I've not seen any actual porn either. Just thirst traps.

It might be because I always block anyone with an OF link in their bio, but then that policy doesn't work on Insta.

ivape•48m ago

You think thirst traps are okay for kids? If we rewind time, the Girls Gone Wild commercial is not supposed to be even remotely possible on certain channels.

We’re a derelict society that has become numb, “it’s just a thirst trap”.

We’re in the later innings of a hyper-sexualized society.

Why it’s bad:

1) You shift male puberty into overdrive

2) You continue warping young female concepts of lewdness and body image, effectively “undefining” it (lewdness? What is lewdness?).

3) You also continue warping male concepts of body image

umanwizard•44m ago

When did anyone say it was okay? You’re reading something into the comment that isn’t there.

ivape•39m ago

I read into this sentence:

“Just thirst trap” (And you see the word I read into).

Right. No, I get it. Listen, we collectively have the issue of not recognizing the significance of things. Nothing personal.

Hizonner•40m ago

> You think thirst traps are okay for kids?

Yes.

Promoting vaping, not so much.

> We’re in the later innings of a hyper-sexualized society.

O NOES!

I mean, that's a ridiculous thing to say, but if it were true, so what?

ivape•38m ago

No one can scroll through my shit and get vape content. But granted, I am a walking vape ad with the name, touché.

Two wrongs don’t make a right. I regret this name honestly, as there are a lot of high school and college aged people here.

philipkglass•13m ago

You can email hn@ycombinator.com and request a name change if you don't like the connotations of your current name. Dan and Tom will rename accounts for people.

hackinthebochs•40m ago

Kids as in under 18 teenagers? Yeah sure, why not?

lupusreal•36m ago

Because parasocial relationships with ewhores isn't healthy, particularly at a stage in their life when they should be forming real relationships with their peers.

gjsman-1000•23m ago

The fact this is downvoted goes into my “screw HN” bucket.

Over the last year, I used to care about what HN generally believed; but seeing obvious statements like this downvoted, makes me just want to support every tech regulation and age verification law we hate here.

dogleash•9m ago

It's goalpost shifting. If the concern is parasocail relationships to content creators formed with pornography as the hook, then pornographic content where the actors aren't cultivating or interacting with a social media followerbase should be better, right?

gjsman-1000•9m ago

Do I care when both are dangerously stupid to hook kids on?

dogleash•14m ago

Parasocial relationships are a different topic than pornography.

Are you saying that the intersection is uniquely bad? In either case limits to content made in an effort to minimize parasocial relationships cut across very different lines than if the goal is minimizing access to porn.

mothballed•14m ago

I have a dumb question, but how do ewhores capitalize on this? Do they have teens running captcha farms or something?

hackinthebochs•1m ago

Scrolling through attractive women (generally the thirst-traps are women) doesn't imply forming a parasocial relationship. I agree that parasocial relationships are bad, but this is independent of them being thirst-traps. Internet thirst-traps are just the modern equivalent of sneaking a look at a playboy mag or a lingerie catalogue. Nothing inherently damaging about it. The scale of modern social media can make otherwise innocuous stimuli damaging, but this is also independent of it being content of sexy women.

mvieira38•1h ago

This content isn't as overt as it may seem, maybe you did come across it and just didn't notice flashing. Those "in the know", generally younger people whose friends told them about flashtok, know what to look for

causal•1h ago

Also: kids click on links adult ignore without thinking. Our brains have built in filters for avoiding content we don't want; for kids everything is novel.

mvieira38•55m ago

Teens are way more excited than adults at seeing this stuff, as well, so we can expect engagement to increase the dirtier the content shown gets

saurik•48m ago

I wonder when this study happened? FWIW, there was some pretty intense bombing of full-on nudity content to TikTok a month or two ago--it all looked like very automated bot accounts that were suddenly posting scenes with fully nude content cut out of movies--that I saw a number of people surprised were showing up in their feeds. It felt... weaponized? (And it did not last long at all, FWIW: TikTok figured it out. But it was intense and... confusing?)

Hizonner•44m ago

They are saying that they can find some of that content when they use relatively sophisticated techniques to intentionally try to find it.

They are in the business of whipping up outrage, and should not be given any oxygen.

lupusreal•42m ago

> relatively sophisticated techniques

Clicking on thirst trap videos?

Hizonner•40m ago

... and searching for obfuscated strings that nobody would even know about unless they were actively looking.

lupusreal•37m ago

Are you making that up, or do you have a source?

> Researchers found TikTok suggested sexualised and explicit search terms to seven test accounts that were created on clean phones with no search history.

Hizonner•21m ago

I hate to direct traffic to people like that, but, you know, how about their actual "study"? I realize that the "journalists" at the Guardian aren't willing to provide the actual source link, but it's not hard to find.

https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/tikto...

Their methodology involves searching for suggested terms. They find the most outrage-inducing or outrage-adjacent terms offered to them at each step, and then iterate. They thereby discover, and search for, obfuscated terms being used by "the community" to describe the content they are desperately seeking.

They also find a lot of bullshit like the names of non-porn TV shows that they're too out of touch to recognize and too lazy to look up, and use those names to gin up more outrage, but that's a different matter.

This is, of course, all in the service of whipping up a moral panic over something that doesn't fucking matter to begin with.

_benedict•5m ago

Thank you for linking the source material, unfortunately it badly contradicts you. It clearly shows that the _very first_ list of ten suggested search terms contained (pretty heavily) sexualised suggestions.

ndriscoll•29m ago

They told the service they are a child. There should be zero porn available under any search term. Simple as.

Hizonner•19m ago

You write the code for that and get back to me. Remember it has to work when the users are actively adversarial.

You will of course have wasted your time on a non-problem, but at least maybe you'll have an appreciation for how hard a non-problem it is.

ajsnigrutin•1h ago

I'm old enough, and except for places like 4chan, and ads on torrent sites (before adblocks were a thing), I pretty much never saw porn online by accident. The closes to porn were censored boobs on social networks when someone shared some daily mail article or other mainstream media stuff.

On the other hand... There is "WikiHitler", a game where people click on a "random article" on wikipedia and try to reach the "Adolf Hitler" page in the least amount of clicks... so yeah, technically, on wikipedia, you're always a few clicks away from Hitler too, but not by accident.

consp•39m ago

These are all versions of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon [1] (or the Erdos variant if you like) and thus no surprise at all. And these includes this "clicks needed to get to porn" variant.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon

miyuru•58m ago

here is the original article from globalwitness with screenshots.

https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/tikto...

I don't know why news sites don't link to the source, but that's another discussion.

ChromaticPanic•25m ago

Looks like basic thirst trap content , probably not included to maximize their rage baiting. I don't understand why these puritans don't just move to the middle east. They instead ruin the internet for the rest of us.

0_____0•19m ago

> 3. We have deliberately not included examples of the hardcore pornography that was shown to us.

jacooper•57m ago

The conversation around tiktok is so politicized and biased to the point I just can't take such results seriously.

If this was Instagram nobody would care.

> Global Witness, a climate organisation whose remit includes investigating big tech’s impact on human rights, said it conducted two batches of tests, with one set before the implementation of child protection rules under the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) on 25 July and another after.

Also why the hell is a human rights / climate org doing research on tiktok?

ceejayoz•54m ago

> Also why the hell is a human rights / climate org doing research on tiktok?

Because such places are significant spots for propaganda and misinformation relating to both topics?

zakki•56m ago

On X, if you click a trending topic and scroll them down you'll see porn content quiet soon. #Indonesia trending topic.

thankslarry•55m ago

Thanks Larry Ellison

https://fortune.com/2025/09/28/larry-ellison-ai-surveillance...

ratelimitsteve•45m ago

>hardcore pawn [sic] clips

Here's a link to the wiki for actual reality television show that exists in real life, Hardcore Pawn (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcore_Pawn). That isn't a misspelling. Welcome to the phase of the TrumpTok Takeover where We Need To Do Something To Protect The Children. I wish you luck in the Telescreen portion. Remember, if you make woke facial expressions at the camera during any of the daily loyalty oaths you will be declared Antifa and reeducated.

>After a “small number of clicks” the researchers encountered pornographic content ranging from women flashing to penetrative sex.

Where? I'm a grown ass adult who likes sex and has had a tiktok account for years now and I can't find any of this. I can find people dancing, dressed in a way that would be perfectly acceptable in public, but where are the women flashing and penetrative sex? Can anyone confirm that they've seen any of these things at all on TikTok, not to mention after a "small number of clicks"?

throw78311•44m ago

The resolution of the "national threat" chapter of Tiktok was pretty much a defeat for the other social media giants, so I guess they'll pursue this angle now.

Razengan•40m ago

Yep the Facebook/Twitter lobbyists must be at the "Think of the children!" stage of the playbook now, instead of actually competing for once.

Guess those dumb TikTok-wannabe Shorts/Stories didn't work out.

Up next: Terrorist attacks coordinated via TikTok?

Or maybe a school shooting, leading to a ban on TikTok instead of guns.

Oh Murica..

andrepd•35m ago

Yeah, all algorithmic social media does this to one extent or another. Suddenly it's okay if they're owned by Musk instead of the Chinese?

teekert•41m ago

Not just TikTok, I checked out SnapChat because my kid is the last one in his class to not have it (according to him). First movie I see 2 people falling off an e-bike, pretty painful, then someone making fun of someone with down syndrome, then some weirdly squirming middle aged women with duck faces, and then some very young ones (pretending to?) * off someone off screen while staring into the camera.

Also I denied all access but it still suggested all my sons friends? How? Oh, and it won't even start without access to cameras.

I was pretty shocked. Still, friend off mine, a teacher tells me: You can't let your kid not have SnapChat, it's very important to them.

The Chinese apparently say: Just regulate! TikTok in our country is fun, educational even with safeguards against addiction. Because they mandate it. Somehow we don't want that here? We see it as overreach? Well I'm ready for some overreach (not ChatControl overreach, but you get what I mean). We leave it all up to the parents here, and all parents say: "Well my kid can't be the only one to not have it."

Meanwhile the kids I speak to tell me they regularly have vapeshops popping up in SnapChat, some dudes sell vapes with candy flavors (outlawed here) until the cops show up.

Yeah, we also did stupid things, I know, we grew up, found pron books in the park (pretty gross in retrospect), drank alcohol as young as 15, etc. I still feel this is different. We're just handing it to them.

Edit: Idk if you ever tried SnapChat but it is TikTok, chat, weird AI filters and something called "stories" which for me features a barely dressed girl in a Sauna.

AlexandrB•35m ago

Giving phones to kids was a very bad idea. I don't know how it became normalized.

tboyd47•33m ago

Like everything bad is normalized... step by step.

energy123•31m ago

They turn the kid into the weapon, the parents don't hear the end of it until they cave and buy the thing

jordanb•31m ago

"Safety" is how it was originally billed: your kids can call you if they get in trouble. They also created apps that let parents spy on where there kids were.

ricw•32m ago

Instagram is the same. Had to install it for a dev project and it was disgusting. Social media just can’t be trusted.

Larrikin•31m ago

Why would kids just not immediately switch to something else? This reads like a parent saying video games should only be educational because of course the kid only cares about it being a video game and not the content.

It works in China because they have chat control to the extreme.

mothballed•31m ago

>I was pretty shocked. Still, friend off mine, a teacher tells me: You can't let your kid not have SnapChat, it's very important to them.

Yeah, it's OK to say no.

If the kid wants a phone and snapchat, there's nothing wrong with saying you simply won't be supplying that and if they want it they'd best figure out how to mow lawns. If you're old enough to "need" a phone you're old enough to hustle some yardwork and walk to the T-Mobile store yourself.

yread•40m ago

Heh on Facebook you don't even need any clicks. I logged in after a few years and the first video among the facebook shorts or whatever it's called was a woman removing her underwear.

nekusar•39m ago

I know I got rid of Tiktok a while back. But never have I ever seen actual porn, or even topless women on Tiktok.

Of course, news rag cant publish the pictures/video and the accounts as proof. But we're supposed to take their word for it? Hard pass on that.

Now, I have seen advertisements that used sexism of various sorts. And this is common wherever advertising and capitalism take hold - its a quick and dirty hack to help sell garbage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_in_advertising

weakfish•24m ago

They did post proof…

https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/digital-threats/tikto...

trollbridge•35m ago

Up next: certain politicians explaining why they need to take over TikTok and sell shares at a bargain price to their buddies.

random9749832•34m ago

Breaking News: If you leave your child on TikTok unregulated you are an idiot.

The world is hostile and full of exploitation. It is no different on the internet.

throwacct•25m ago

Exactly. I don't understand why children "need" to use any social network. We were raised without it, and so can any kid, for that matter.

andrepd•32m ago

I firmly believe algorithmic social media will go down in history as one of the most harmful inventions in the capitalist world, on par with the massification of cigarretes or leaded gasoline, or worse. I'm not being hyperbolic.

throwaway2016a•32m ago

If you consider "skimpy outfits" pornographic that both Facebook and X are worse than TikTok for me. I've seen a few pieces of content I had to report before but not many.

X, on the other hand, has literal advertisements for adult products on my feed and I get followed by "adult" bot accounts several times a week that when I click through to block them often shows me literal porn. Same with spam facebook friend requests.

I think it boils down to a simple fact that trying to police user-generated content is always going to be an up-hill battle and it doesn't necessarily reflect on the company itself.

> Global Witness claimed TikTok was in breach of the OSA, which requires tech companies to prevent children from encountering harmful content...

Ok, that is noble goal but I feel that the gap between "reasonable measures" and "prevent" is vast.

gjsman-1000•31m ago

> I think it boils down to a simple fact that trying to police user-generated content is always going to be an up-hill battle and it doesn't necessarily reflect on the company itself.

I think it boils down to the simple fact that policing user-generated content is completely possible, it just requires identity verification, which is a very unpopular but completely effective idea. Almost like we rediscovered, for the internet, the same problems that need identity in other areas of life.

I think you will also see a push for it in the years ahead. Not necessarily because of some crazy new secret scheme, but because robots will be smart enough to beat most CAPTCHAs or other techniques, and AI will be too convincing, causing websites to be overrun. Reddit is already estimated to be somewhere between 20% and 40% robots. Reddit was also caught with their pants down by a study recently, with an AI robot on r/changemymind racking up ridiculous amounts of karma undetected.

perihelions•23m ago

> "A spokesperson for Ofcom, the UK communications regulator charged with overseeing the act, said: “We appreciate the work behind this research and will review its findings.”"

This is disingenuous; the supposed NGO behind this is funded by another arm of the British government, the DFID (Department for International Development). This is native propaganda—the UK government is laundering its own pro-OSA agenda through watchdog organizations that aren't independent at all.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100902185631/http://www.global... ("Our Funders")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Witness#Income

EU's parallel censorship regime did something similarly inauthentic (unlawfully targeted pro-Chat Control ads to influence votes).

https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-complaint-against-eu-commissio... ("noyb files complaint against EU Commission over targeted chat control ad campaign")

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TikTok 'directs child accounts to pornographic content within a few clicks'

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