Something strange is afoot in the world of TikTok, with users noticing that livestreams that seemingly show women working on assembly lines have suddenly become more prevalent on the app.
The streams are primarily posted from accounts with spammy-sounding names, no other videos, or identifiable information, including one account that has since been removed. While videos filmed inside factories aren’t new - the factory hashtag has over 11 billion views - the sheer number of similar-looking livestreams appears to be a fairly recent phenomenon.
@user4563406100579 Filming the little sister in the Chinese factory works efficiently and earns $15 a day. Field shooting
♬ 原创音乐 - wen
The streams focus on one young Asian woman, who appears to have some sort of makeup filter on, working diligently jamming LED light sticks into a hub to check that they’re functional. The women keep up a constant stream of chatter in Mandarin for their audience - as one tweeter noted about one such stream, “There wasn’t a second she wasn’t talking.”
Others have also taken notice and are equally as confused by these mysterious livestreams.
Do you ever just come across these tiktok live streams of chinese factory workers where they are talking and singing to the audience. And then start to question that their job is product testing thousands of these LED light USB sticks and wonder who is actually buying these. pic.twitter.com/Mb3KDLIsvN
— Haileys Comment ($8) (@haileynugget) May 13, 2023
Tiktok lives are crazy. I was scrolling through tiktok last night and I came across this live of these four Chinese women and I think they worked at a toothbrush factory or something. They kept bending toothbrushes and then putting them on a conveyor belt
— bee (@laridae_) May 14, 2023
can someone explain why there are so many tiktok livestreams of just chinese factory workers?
— Nic (@nicholasung) May 7, 2023
What makes them stranger still is that TikTok isn’t available in China; residents can instead use sister app Douyin. Accessing TikTok isn’t impossible for anyone reasonably tech savvy, of course, but it does seem like a lot of effort to go to just to stream live from an assembly line.
What do these streams mean? According to one translation of the above video, the woman featured could be seen responding to commenters and rattling off a list of places around China (she mentions she’s based in Chengdu) - Anhui, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Kunshan, Jinhua, and others - before advising viewers how to sign up, presumably for work similar to hers.
This makes the fact that the streams are appearing on TikTok even stranger - most viewers wouldn’t be based in China and able to apply for jobs there. Perhaps there is no mystery - perhaps this really is just what recruitment drives look like in 2023.
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