Here’s what I found out about Bigo Live

I first dove into the video thinking that I would just be a simple “What Is Bigo Live?” video. However, going through the footage and finding information out through my own research, I found that Bigo isn’t just a run-of-the-mill video platform—it’s got a dark side.

I first made it a point to look through the content on bigo.tv. I was surprised to find out that instead of a variety of categories like in Twitch‘s browsing page, Bigo only offered two categories: Gaming and Showbiz.

The Gaming section was easy to browse through, although I noted that there were just a lot more mobile gaming live play-throughs. Considering that Bigo is mostly a mobile site, it was completely understandable.

As soon as I clicked on Showbiz, I was immediately overwhelmed at the amount of content, and how little to no organisation there is to the types of content. While scrolling through, I watched perfectly regular live content like chatting, to dancing, to singing. But then I noticed how weird the content can get.

There are plenty streams of religious sermons, as well as DJ sets and exercise classes. However, those only made up a small percentage of the ‘Showbiz’ content page. Most of them are just individuals talking to their fans, or audiences. But what I couldn’t believe was how easy it was to find content of people with low cut tops, or dance seductively.

It’s not just the broadcasters. The comment section is sometimes severely blunt, asking the broadcasters to “turn around” and “dance pls”—among other things. There’s also a livestream of someone taking a shower. Although you don’t see them besides their feet, it’s still a bit sick.

Bigo Live Broadcasters

I talked to Jaysung and Isadora, popular local Bigo Broadcasters, about the questions I’ve had after looking through Bigo Live myself. They mentioned that they’ve earned up to RM15,000 a month through live-broadcasting. Their fans and viewers would send ‘Beans’, which turn into real money—just like ‘Bits‘ on Twitch.

However, with such a big audience, they have to be careful balancing between their own lives and their lives on Bigo. Isadora opened up about how she had a stalker walk right into her office to look for her.

“Because we’re live every day, and we tell them where we are. They know where our office is, and what we say. Maybe he wanted to see me. He went to my office and asked ‘Does Isadora work here?’. The receptionist said ‘No, she doesn’t’. I already told the receptionist to not say anything, because it’s for my safety, too. But then he said ‘No, but I saw her Live upstairs. I know!'” said Isadora.

Besides that, they shared how people who enter a room to find inappropriate content needs to press ‘report’ to get the stream investigated. The concern I had for that is ‘what about content that isn’t reported?’

According to Bigo

I had to ask a Bigo insider, and I luckily was able to talk to the Vice President of Bigo Technology Mike Ong. I asked him about Bigo’s disturbing brush with child pornography in the past, and he mentioned that “it was a very steep learning curve for (Bigo)” and that they have “continued to evolve along the way”.

“We have sort of perfected a system whereby (Bigo) is able to detect any undesirable content and take them down within 60 seconds,” said Ong, “Let’s say if you are livestreaming a session and you have a picture of a gun, that is next to you, immediately the system will pick it up and it will stop the livestreaming.”

While it seemed like he answered my questions, there were still concerns a few days after my conversation with him. If they ‘perfected’ it, why is there still a lot of unregulated content?

Trying Bigo myself

I truly couldn’t speak about Bigo without trying it myself, which is exactly what I did. My experience was positive, and as someone who likes to talk about themselves, live-streaming was almost second nature to me.

I previously asked Isadora, Jaysung and Mike for advice when it comes to going live on the Platform. Isadora gave solid advice like the type of content that works and doesn’t work. Mike noted that “not everybody can be in front of a screen 8-10 hours a day”.

My experience was only a mere 45 minutes, but in that short time I got myself about 60 people who watched, gained 3 fans (3 more than I thought I would get) and a few very nice comments (as well as some I could have done without). I tried to catch people’s attention with the concept of “playing with make-up”, and it eventually became me trying to make people laugh by turning myself into a cartoon character.

Conclusion

I had a lot of fun being on Bigo, but would I consider being on the platform more? Probably not due to the amount of effort Bigo Broadcasters have to do in order to get cash-flow. The Broadcasters genuinely can make a big sum of money a month being themselves.

However, in my own experience, if my goal was to earn as much money as I could, I’d be thinking of surefire easy ways to get viewers’ attention. How do I gain fans? How do I get a lot of money? So, I do not blame Broadcasters when they opt for sexier content, but enough not to get in trouble with Bigo Live’s vague rules.

What the problem can be is the system as a whole. How do you balance a high amount of views but also make it harder for the same people to watch ‘unsavoury’ content? Bigo’s problem is also not that new, as platforms like YouTube, Twitch and TikTok have had plenty of controversies themselves.

What we can do, perhaps, is to help report content that can be considered unsafe, or unsuitable for children. Currently, anyone at any age can visit the Bigo.tv website without needing to sign up to watch anything shown, even if the Bigo mobile app only allows viewers 18 years and older.

What do you think of Bigo? What were your first impressions when you’ve visited the site or downloaded the app? Let me know in the comments!