A Chinese live-streaming app says it will stop allowing minors to do “live shows” until it can upgrade its security measures after it emerged that primary school children were performing naked and being sent “virtual gifts” by viewers.
In an article on Friday, Chinese outlet ThePaper.cn reported that children using Meipai, a live-streaming app popular on the mainland, were removing clothing and exposing their private parts on camera to attract followers on the service.
Viewers were encouraging the young girls to pose in sexually suggestive ways and sending them virtual gifts like “flowers” and a “sports car” that can be exchanged for real money.
ThePaper.cn spoke with a girl, registered on the site as a 12 year old, who said she performed naked to get more followers.
“In my class, I have the largest number of followers,” she said, adding the app, which has more than 570 million users.
The girl she had earned 170 RMB (HK$200 or US$25) in total after using Meipai for over a year.
“It’s just for fun, not for money,” she said, according to ThePaper.cn.
On Saturday, the company released a statement apologizing for its “mistake”.
It said that all juvenile users registered with the site would be banned from doing live shows until the end of December, when the company will launch a “new real-same system” to verify users identities.
It didn’t give any more details about how its new system would protect minors.
Speaking to the ThePaper.cn, a staffer from Meipai claimed the company had also banned new underage users from the site, though on Monday netizens reported still being able to sign up to the app with a juvenile ID.
Relatively recently, live-streaming services have become a booming industry in China, though many have become infamous as sources of erotic content.
In April, the Chinese government, which closely monitors and censors the internet its citizens access, shut down 18 living-streaming companies for “spreading erotic and obscene content”.
Since 2016, people appearing on live streaming apps, also known as hosts, are required to register under real names, though no regulation has been set on the age of users, including viewers and hosts.
The recent uproar not the first time the use of live-streaming apps by minors in China has come under scrutiny.
Early in 2016, a video of a pregnant 14-year-old doing a live-streaming show went viral on Chinese social media platform Weibo, which was criticized for not protecting her privacy. Others also said the case should have been sent to the police. Fourteen is the age of consent for sexual activity in China.
According to a Chinese internet watchdog Trustdata, the live streaming boom is driven largely by younger generations in China, where about 50 percent of internet users were born either in the 1990s or 2000s.
