TIKTOK SHOCK

SCHOOLGIRLS USE APP TO GET CASH FROM PERVS

- AMY SHARPE

>Horror as pupils pose for 'paypigs'

>Failure of 'safe' apps to spot danger

SOCIAL media giant TikTok failed to stop British schoolgirls from posting videos of themselves in their uniforms asking for cash from sick groomers.

The smartphone app used by millions of children - let the shocking clips stay up for months, along with comments from pervert "customers”.

Some of the clips of the four schoolgirls we reveal today appear to have been taken in classrooms and toilets. Three of them are thought to be from the same school.

The pupils used hashtags to boost followers such as "sugar daddy" and "pay pigs" - web slang for men who make cash transfers to women who post X-rated images. There is no evidence that the schoolgirls in our probe have sent explicit messages.

But they did share payment details with creeps who made comments like: "You've always got another career if your GCSEs fail."

It was only when we showed our chilling evidence to TikTok yesterday that the posts were removed.

Three of them also had private Instagram accounts which were also closed last night.

HORRIFIED

Some TikTok clips were uploaded as long ago as April. The worrying hashtags should have raised alarm bells among the app's 10,000 watchdog moderators, but the videos remained despite a pledge from the £60billion app's Chinese owner Bytedance to keep children safe.

The firm insists it has "zero tolerance for child sexual abuse and sexualized content of [...] any person under the age of 18". It defines this as "any visual, textual and audible depictions or production of explicit or inferred child sexual assault and child exploitation".