On Wednesday, thousands of TikTok users in Florida used TikTok's livestream feature to offer a window into their lives as the hurricane approached. Some showed beaches and struggled to speak above the howling winds, while others broadcast from their homes as trees whipped outside.
Brad Stecklein, a golf instructor in Fort Myers who goes by golfpantsman on TikTok, told NBC News in a phone interview on Wednesday. Stecklein has gone live on TikTok to over 5,000 people to showcase the storm in his backyard.
In the last 20 years, my wife and I have lived down here, these storms have been so overhyped. It is hard to take them seriously, he said. This one is going to redefine how people act. Stecklein also made some regular TikTok videos in between his livestreams.
As the Category 4 storm approached the coast of Florida on Wednesday, authorities urged residents in low-lying counties to leave before floodwaters hit. But many people have stayed with livestreaming their circumstances to give people a sense of what is happening on the ground.
One man said in a livestream while water poured into his backyard pool that he wanted to give everyone a view of what is going on in this area. The user, derek sheen, said he was in Lee County, near the Gulf of Mexico. He didn't respond immediately to a request for comment.
He said it was not as bad as I thought it would be. I d go for a swim right now, but I don't think it's safe. NBC News found a wide variety of livestreams from Floridians who have previously posted other location-identifying information on social media. Their livestreams show a torrential downpour, strong winds and rising waters in communities like Cape Coral and West Palm Beach.
Some livestreams drew thousands and even thousands of viewers, many of whom sent prayers and messages of support through the platform's comment system. More than 55,000 concurrent viewers were seen in a livestream seen by NBC News.
One woman said thousands of people tuned into her livestream while thousands of people were watching. The user, flexi.lexiiiiii, is identified on Instagram as a personal trainer in Cape Coral, which is in a state of emergency due to the hurricane. She didn't respond immediately to a request for comment.
The palm trees braced against the strong winds in her front yard. A man could be heard from the offscreen, describing the winds as over 70 miles per hour. Some comments trickling in sent the woman prayers, while others predicted her house would disappear. TikTok didn't respond immediately to a request for comment about the hurricane livestreams.
In the year 2019 TikTok introduced its livestream feature, which has become a popular way of creating content on the app. TikTok's feature has become one of the most widely embraced live platforms, despite the fact that livestreaming has been around for years on the internet. In July, TikTok released a study from Ipsos, a market research company, that found 1 in 5 users watched livestreams on the app, and that 62% of that group watched a livestream every day. TikTok currently has over a billion monthly users.
TikTok is one of the biggest livestream platforms alongside Twitch, the Amazon-owned livestream platform that is focused on gaming.
TikTok's livestreaming feature has been used for fun but also to share breaking news, such as when Russia invaded Ukraine. Some TikTok users pretending to be in active conflict zones were used to share disinformation - early in the Ukraine conflict, according to NBC News.
Anyone can be an amateur journalist, Stecklein said. Anyone can say this is what you see, if you're an amateur.