How influencers manipulate followers to increase their revenue

Nathanaël L’Huillier proudly recalled the time when he reached eighth place in TikTok’s French “weekly rankings.” His live videos, which he films at home on his mobile phone, brought this 30-year-old from the central Nièvre region unprecedented online exposure and success. Above all, the up-and-coming influencer received around €10,000 in virtual gifts from his subscribers, in the space of seven days.

L’Huillier is just one of many examples that confirm the power of the highly lucrative TikTok live events for content creators, even though the platform collects half the value of donations received through commissions, according to the content creators Le Monde interviewed. By developing more and more live community features and events, ByteDance’s social media platform is increasingly relying on this practice, which was introduced in 2019 to accelerate its international development. This is done at the risk of reinforcing the self-serving tendencies among certain influencers and fostering addictive behaviors among internet users, some of whom are very young.

Race for profits

Indeed, simply opening the live tab in the application reveals that many of the creators producing live videos have the sole aim of encouraging their subscribers to send money. To achieve this, they each have their own methods. There are those who assume the roles of characters reacting differently to each donation received, as illustrated by the recent trend of “NPC content,” which involves interacting with subscribers as if you were a non-playable video game character.

Others choose to take on increasingly complex challenges, depending on the value of the gift they’ve received. Take Maxime, aka Aquizop, for instance: “I came up with the idea of combining weightlifting and interaction with my subscribers: They send me gifts, and in return, I lift a certain weight a certain number of times,” said the 18-year-old.

There are lso athose who stage “matches” between their community and that of a peer, especially among ex-reality TV contestants. On a split screen, whoever receives the most gifts from their viewers at the end of a five-minute countdown wins the “game.” L’Huillier participates enthusiastically in this exercise for nine hours every day: “The aim is to find your opponent and tell him, ‘Your team sucks, they’re on the dole!’ to rile up their troops and motivate mine to play.”

What’s more, it works. When Le Monde enquired about the money invested in the feature by French users, TikTok did not respond. But, in the US, live events generated more than $250 million in gifts in the third quarter of 2023 alone, according to The Information.

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