{"id":414445,"date":"2026-01-15T10:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T10:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/414445\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T10:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T10:46:10","slug":"homeless-entertainment-perth-tiktokker-western-claims-social-media-ban-destroying-his-profits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/414445\/","title":{"rendered":"Homeless entertainment: Perth TikTokker Western claims social media ban destroying his profits"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Perth<\/a> content creator who spent much of his teenage years living on the streets says social media \u201csaved\u201d his life \u2014 but claims the under-16s ban is now threatening his livelihood.<\/p>\n

Known to followers as Homeless Entertainment, Western had been earning between $100 and $400 a week through TikTok before the ban came into effect on December 10 last year. But he says his income has dropped dramatically since the changes were introduced.<\/p>\n

The 18-year-old told PerthNow the majority of his income was not from posting videos but from the livestreams he was doing which are now getting a lot less exposure as the majority of his audience are teenagers who can no longer access the platform.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight before the ban happened, my videos were getting between 100,000 and 800,000 views, right after the ban happens I\u2019ve gone down to 500 views on a video, I\u2019ve stopped being paid, I\u2019m now struggling to get food and stuff like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d say that 50 per cent to 60 per cent of my audience was under 16, a large part of my audience are adults but it\u2019s mainly the under 16s who interact with the videos which is why it\u2019s tanked so much,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Western\u2019s stance on the social media ban isn\u2019t that it shouldn\u2019t of happened, but that the crackdown should have been placed on social media platforms, not the users.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think instead of forcing these younger people to get off social media for their protection, we should have gone to the social media (platforms) themselves and told them to ban addictive features, improve moderation and make it so these kids don\u2019t get adult content on their feeds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For Western, social media has provided a source of purpose and created an online community after he became homeless at the age of 13. He lived on the streets until he was 17 and was able to buy a trailer which he now lives in.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can fully say with confidence that social media has saved my life countless times,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"SocialCamera IconSocial media also served a supportive purpose for Western before he became a content creator. Credit: TikTok\/@homelessentertainment<\/p>\n

Social media also served a supportive purpose for Western before he became a content creator.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was younger, I would also use social media because if I\u2019m being real, I wasn\u2019t the most popular kid, I did get bullied. I would turn to social media to find support groups and help with that and that really helped me throughout my youth too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like the youth should have the option to find support groups like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to Western\u2019s aspirations for the future, he wants to be one of the \u201cbiggest\u201d content creators while also staying connected to the community he is building.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be the people\u2019s streamer, you see a lot of content creators who think they\u2019re Gods. I want to be the person people can look to and be like, he\u2019s just one of us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Perth content creator who spent much of his teenage years living on the streets says social media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134,44,46,105,45],"class_list":["post-414445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-news","tag-perth","tag-technology","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}