On June 1, Douyin’s official notice board put out a statement about their ongoing cleanup of harmful content targeting minors. They said they’ve caught some really tricky violations recently—stuff like using “incest” themes to funnel people into porn, or using kids’ images to post vulgar stuff—all super sneaky and hard to spot.
Douyin shared two typical cases. One involved accounts pretending to be “tutoring moms” or “single moms,” posting sexy, borderline videos and using hidden slang to push creepy incest themes. After digging deeper, the platform found these accounts were luring users to third-party platforms to spread porn and even scamming them. Douyin cleaned up the content, banned the accounts, and handed over the evidence to authorities. In the end, four suspects in the group were arrested and criminally detained.
Case two: Accounts like “X*O” and “K*O” showed minors dancing in revealing clothes, shaking hips and squeezing legs in a suggestive way to get attention. They even labeled themselves “adults” to dodge the platform’s checks. Douyin took down those videos and slapped the accounts with restrictions like no posting and no commenting. According to Douyin, nearly 900 accounts got banned in the past month.
Douyin said they’ll keep beefing up their tech and review process to crack down on all kinds of harmful content involving minors, leaving no stone unturned.
Fighting porn traffic and lowbrow content has become a regular thing for Douyin. Back in April, the platform warned that some users were using “AI tutorial” as a cover to share AI-generated sexy content, trying to drive traffic and gain followers. Douyin said they’d crack down hard, and if it’s illegal, they’d hand over the evidence to authorities.
At that time, Douyin shared a case where violators bought other people’s accounts, posted racy stuff to gather followers, then redirected them to third-party apps for spreading porn or pushing porn sites. The platform collected evidence, reported it, and three suspects were eventually arrested and detained.
Also, Douyin found some accounts sharing prompts and tutorials for AI-generated explicit content using coded language, which broke the platform’s rules. The platform did a full sweep and took down over 3,000 pieces of content in about two weeks. Accounts like “w**w” and “9**8” were caught pushing bad websites or apps through such content—their posts were removed and they were muted.
Nowadays, the online world is a big part of kids’ lives, and illegal or harmful info online is one of the biggest risks to their health. The “15th Five-Year Plan” says we need to step up online protection for minors, create safer spaces for them, and build a society that cares about the next generation.
According to a recent report by the People’s Court Daily, the second batch of results from a special campaign on minor online protection showed that during the summer of 2025, Beijing’s Internet Information Office handled over 680,000 reports of harmful content involving minors and dealt with more than 7,800 violative accounts. Content harm still tops the list of online risks for kids—porn, violence, bullying, and suicide encouragement haven’t gone away. But what’s even scarier is how sneaky these risks are getting. Some “borderline” content, like soft porn or bad values disguised in code, uses algorithms to dodge normal checks and gets pushed right to young users.
The People’s Court Daily also pointed out that, based on basic legal principles and risk control theory, online platforms have a duty to protect minors from risks. From a long-term business view, shifting from just reacting to actively protecting kids isn’t just about social responsibility—it’s a smart move for the platform’s own future.
