for hours at a time, begging for digital gifts. hannah gelbart has more details. chanting: send me gifts! they re asking for help, for follows, for gifts. this is a new trend on tiktok. working with bbc arabic, we found more than 300 tiktok accounts posting these kinds of videos with viewers sometimes spending more than $1,000 an hour in total on gifts. the idea behind tiktok gifts is to reward creators for interesting content. these gifts are bought with real money and can cost up to $500. the gifts are converted to a virtual currency that you can withdraw as cash. but how much of that goes to the families? and how much does tiktok take for itself? you can see there s a pattern. the children seem to be saying the same kind of things. they are asking for likes and gifts and if you listen closely, sometimes you can hear there s a voice off camera actually
there s been a huge outpouring of sympathy since war broke out in ukraine, and many millions of pounds have been donated to help those affected. sadly, though, cybercriminals are taking advantage of this goodwill, using emotional posts online to divert money away from charities and into their own pockets. the bbc s global disinformation reporter, hannah gelbart, has more. as the war broke out in ukraine, the government put out a plea on twitter for donations. with the war affecting national infrastructure, zelensky signed a law to make crypto currency legal tender in ukraine. it s one of the few countries to do so. so far, they say they have received $70 million in crypto currencies alone. and it set something else in motion as well, criminals, scammers, fired into action, making fake appeals from every corner of the internet. somebody is capitalising on this, and i had a feeling people would fall for this and people are falling for this. so if you look at my history.