Last year Media Matters reported on TikTok Shop’s black market vapes, which merchants misleadingly labeled as innocuous items like “perfume kits” to dodge TikTok’s prohibited products policy banning the sale of vapes. TikTok took action and removed the products referenced in our piece, but now new sellers are using creative techniques to skirt TikTok Shop moderators. Many of these shops feature Geek Bars — which are particularly popular among children — and tout things like a lack of ID verification in an apparent attempt to distribute vapes to minors.
TikTok Shop merchants are covertly selling nicotine vapes by featuring everyday cosmetic items or toys as the main focus of their ad images and text, while subtly including distorted or miniature images of the vapes in the background. This is a different approach from what we flagged in our prior report, when the images of vapes were plainly displayed.
A TikTok Shop store with over 6,300 sales advertised “discreet” Geek Bar-brand disposable vapes using makeup brushes as the primary photo. The description stated that the product being sold was a Geek Bar (the seller referred to the product with coded language, “G-E-B@r-E,K,” seemingly to avoid moderation), noted that brushes were not included, and said buyers did not need ID verification.
Geek Bars are nicotine vapes that are popular among children. There’s a huge market for illegal vapes directed at underage consumers. A 2023 study found that 10 percent of high school students and 4.6 percent of middle school students reported having used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days, even though it is illegal for a retailer to sell any tobacco product to anyone under 21.
Another TikTok Shop store, MUHA-GEEK STORE, has over 12,700 followers and sells Geek Bars disguised as fidget toys, but the product name, “G33K D1sp0sable B@r Fidget Toys,” appears to be misspelled on purpose to avoid moderation. The product description simply states, “Yes. It is real. Discreet Packaging.”
The first results when searching for the term “geek” on TikTok Shop are Geek Bars from the MUHA-GEEK STORE. When a user searches for a term on TikTok Shop, the platform then uses a recommendation algorithm to return and rank product results.
Users must be at least 18 years old to access TikTok Shop, but TikTok has no age verification measures and underage users regularly lie about their age to circumvent content restrictions. New research commissioned by OfCom found that a third of children self-declare a false adult age when creating a social media account.
(Note: Throughout our research for this piece, some of the TikTok Shop stores selling Geek Bars we referenced sporadically disappeared, but new shops emerged. On the day of publication we were able to easily find a Geek Bar on TikTok Shop, this time disguised as a cell phone stand).
