Generous TikTok users, beware – the celebrity you’re watching live on the app and tipping via gifts may not be who you think they are.
Around 1 a.m. ET on July 6, it seemed like Billie Eilish went live on TikTok and chatted with her night-owl fans. Everything looked like you would expect a celebrity live to look: a flood of incoming comments, Billie nonchalantly answering questions, and an endless stream of gifts via TikTok’s in-app tipping system.

But if you looked a little closer, you’d find a couple of inconsistencies. The account “Billie” was live streaming from was not her official, verified TikTok account, but rather one suspiciously named @billieeilishlive_1, which has since been deleted. And though she was answering questions and interacting with fans, none of the comments she addressed seemed to appear in the comments section at the bottom of the Live.

If you stuck around until the end, when Billie said farewell and the Live seemed to conclude, you would have also seen the the entire live stream start over, indicating that the Live was pre-recorded. In this case, the video was most likely a recording of a previous Instagram Live that Billie actually conducted, replayed on TikTok to pass off as real and cash in on TikTok gifts.
This isn’t the first time that this has happened. According to Snopes, another Instagram Live originally hosted by Billie Eilish was broadcasted on TikTok Live on June 24 from the account @billielivehere, passing off as the real celebrity. At one point, this live attracted more than 43,000 viewers at around 3 a.m. ET.
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*Cover image via Instagram @billieeilish
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