Fears over online 'gifting' after claims it may have been contributory factor in a suicide
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A virtual ‘gifting’ feature on social media has not been explicitly included in Coimisiún na Meán’s Draft Online Safety Code, which is designed to protect the public from various harms.
This comes amid claims made in online posts that financial debt racked up as a result of 'gifting' may have been a contributory factor in the recent suicide of a Munster woman. Fears have also been expressed by one expert that the app risks encouraging addictive or compulsive behaviour in users.
The woman, who was a middle-aged healthcare professional and mother, took her own life before Christmas. An inquest into her death has not yet taken place. It has since been alleged by dozens of people who knew her through TikTok that she had accrued significant debts as a result of ‘gifting’ several UK-based TikTok content creators.
‘Gifting’ was introduced by TikTok in 2019 as a way for TikTokers to monetise their popularity by allowing viewers to show their appreciation by buying virtual ‘gifts’. Gifts are tiny animated emojis or cartoons that dance or move around the screen. Content creators can then exchange these gifts for diamonds, and the diamonds are then transferred into cash.
Once a creator makes enough diamonds, they can cash them out for real money using Paypal, transferring the actual worth into their account. TikTok takes a 50% cut of the net revenue of the virtual gifts, making them “the most obvious winners”, according to Dr Stephen Murphy of Trinity Business School.
Gifting is a major feature of TikTok’s Livestreams, more commonly known as ‘box battles’, a fast-paced, live-streaming format where content creators compete to get the most virtual gifts from fans within five minutes. “Get me on the leaderboard, send me them gifts!” is a typical scream from TikTokers at their ‘team’ during such ‘battles’.
Users must be over 18 years to buy a virtual gift costing from as low as .29c for a modest ‘rose’ gift right up to splurging €386 on a roaring ‘lion’ or €506 on a ‘TikTok Universe’.
“Gifting incentivises Tik Tok’s content creators to keep making content, it gives them a way of making revenue outside of paid advertising from brands. This continuous stream of never-ending content is crucial for the success of social media sites like Tik Tok,” says Murphy.
Critics say the ‘gamification’ of the app and its algorithm has led to addictive and/or compulsive behaviour among users. What do the gift-givers get out of gifting? Usually a shout-out by the recipient of their gift, the content creator or the ‘beggars’ as their critics call them.
When this happens, gift-givers “feel like they have real relationships with the content creators they follow,” says Murphy.
“The more generous the gift they give the bigger the reaction they will receive from their beloved content creator. Of course, the difficulty with this is that despite their casual presentation, live streams are highly curated and designed to make users feel like the connection is real."
Murphy warns:
One US TikToker Cindi White is reported to have spent her inheritance — more than €23,000 — looking for companionship on TikTok livestreams.
More worryingly, Murphy points to livestreams being “known to be popular places for sexual predators to lurk and to use gifts to entice young people to perform sexual acts.”
In response to queries from the in relation to the Irish TikTok viewer who died by suicide in December, TikTok said their “deepest sympathies are with the family experiencing this tragic loss.”
They declined to answer a question asking if they agreed that gifting could be addictive — especially during Live Matches — but defended their monetization, gifting and matches safeguards by claiming that TikTok had “some of the industry's firmest standards for using monetization features”.
According to TikTok, they “may temporarily restrict creators' access to matches or gifting if they ask for gifts by promising giveaways or soliciting gifts in exchange for items or services; attempt to bait gifts or engagement in matches by presenting sensitive topics in an inflammatory manner or if they attempt to exploit a potentially traumatic ongoing tragedy in matches (including making false claims) for personal gain.”
When asked if it would introduce a limit on the amount a user could spend on gifting in a month, TikTok said viewers could set customizable live gifting reminders that let them know when they've hit their preferred spending limit for gifts. The app declined to say, however, if they would go as far as limiting the actual spend by viewers.
Ireland’s new regulator for online safety and media, Coimisiún na Meán, has published its first Draft Online Safety Code to protect the general public and children from various harms, which, when finalised this year, will apply to video-sharing platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Udemy, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, Pinterest, Tumblr and Reddit.
It is proposed to protect users from video commercial communications which are harmful such as “any communications which encourage behaviour prejudicial to health or safety.” Yet, there is no explicit mention of gifting per se in the Draft Code.
Coimisiún na Meán’s initial response to queries on gifting was that the activity “may fall within the remit of the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI)”.
However, the Department of Justice, which presides over the GRAI, was quick to wash their hands of any responsibility for the regulation of online gifting, with a spokesperson telling the that the practice of gifting “is not considered gambling” and that, as such, there were “no plans for it to be addressed in the Gambling Regulation Bill or by the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland”.
In their most recent response to the on gifting and if it would be included in their Draft Online Safety Code, Coimisiún na Meán said they would “encourage people to respond to the consultation". That consultation closed on January 31.
In a rapidly-evolving online world, the consequences and dangers of gifting are yet to be fully revealed. A spokesperson for the National Suicide Research Foundation said they were “not aware of any research on this phenomenon”.
None of the content creators who the Irish woman is alleged to have very generously gifted responded to requests for comment. Hundreds of TikTokers expressed their shock and sympathy on the app for her, with one person going so far as to setting up a petition calling on the British Government to ban gifting to protect vulnerable people online. It has so far gathered 1,115 signatures.
“Tiktok won’t be the same without you, you brought the banter and giggles you had the life and soul of the party,” wrote one user called Demi. “A kind hearted lady such a laugh we had on tik tok you will be missed by your tik tok [sic] family,” said Amy Shekleton.
There was little to no political or online reaction in Ireland to her death, except among her grieving family and the community that mourns her loss. Work colleagues described her as “an exceptional person who was so kind and caring and had so much knowledge that she shared with her colleagues. Her laugh was infectious, she had the best sense of humour and lit up every room she walked into.”
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