FOX 11's Bill Melugin was on with us Monday night to talk about this very disturbing FOX 11 investigation that has found that pedophiles are using the popular live streaming app Live.Me to manipulate underage girls into performing sexual acts, by rewarding them with virtual currency, and then posting screen captures or recordings of the girls online to be sold and distributed as child porn. Many parents don't realize that their teens even have the app loaded on their phones.
- What is Live.Me? It is a popular live streaming Chinese app that has been downloaded 96 million times.
- How does it work? The app shares the users location, and allows users to search for who is streaming near them.
- Live.Me’s website says the app is explicitly meant to be used by people over the age of thirteen, but FOX 11 found girls as young as seven or eight years old using the app.
Their corporate office is located in China, but they do have an office in West Hollywood.
A representative told FOX 11 he couldn’t go on camera, but he did provide a statement:
“As unfortunate and disturbing as some of these reports are, these are issues not unique to LiveMe, but reflect the challenges all social media platforms are confronting each day. We strive to provide a safe and enjoyable platform for our users, relying heavily on artificial intelligence and the 100 moderators we employ across the globe who are on call 24 hours a day. We will continue to focus on our mission to build the best live broadcasting platform, while working closely with law enforcement and the various agencies they support to protect our community,” the official wrote.
It gets worse -
Computer forensics expert Chris Pavan tells FOX 11 some pedophiles are recording the live streams to sell as child porn.
“The screen captures are being recorded to their computers. They’ll edit it down, they’ll generate something that is viewable by pretty much anybody’s computer and then they upload it to a file sharing site where an individual who wants to consume it can download it and has to pay some money for that file.”