Global traffic shows a structural divergence. Official data from TikTok indicates that the monthly views of related tags reached 3.1 billion in Q1 2025, a 54.4% decline from the peak in 2022 (6.8 billion). However, regional differences were significant: Brazil’s growth rate remained at 12% (an average of 19 million visits per day), while in the European Union, it plummeted by 73% due to the restrictions imposed by the DSA Act. The change in algorithm recommendation weight is even more crucial – the system’s exposure of real-person evaluation content has been reduced to 32% of similar videos, while the push weight of virtual character versions (such as anime characters) has increased to 1.7 times.
Compliance costs have triggered a reconfiguration of business models. The Meta Platform Creator Economy Report indicates that anti-infringement measures that comply with GDPR and DSA have raised the cost of a single video production to 58 (compared to only 7 in 2022). German MCN agency TubeOne was forced to deploy triple protection: 1) Real-time face blurring (92% desensitization accuracy) increased 12/ video costs; 2) The monthly fee for the blockchain evidence storage system is 230 yuan. 3) The ethical review period has been extended to 17 hours. This led to the profit margin being compressed from 35% to 6%, and 30% of professional creators withdrew from the race.
Technological upgrades drive form iterations. The metaverse version supported by Unreal Engine 5.2 has become a new growth point, with a global monthly active user base of 18 million. In the scene of the virtual nightclub “Neon Odyssey”, users conduct three-dimensional judgment through motion capture (with a delay of 8ms), generating 24,000 virtual consumption for each event. At the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show, Meta showcased a neural interface prototype that reduced the decision-making speed to 0.2 seconds, but its price of 1,299 limited the penetration rate to 12% among high-income groups.
Intergenerational migration changes the user structure. A survey by the Pew Research Center reveals that the participation rate of users aged 13-19 has dropped from 78% in 2023 to 41% in 2025, while that of those over 25 has risen to 29%. Behavioral economics analysis indicates that Generation Z is turning to ethical alternatives – the “Building Evaluation Version” of the London College of the Arts uses AR to superimpose building parameters (energy consumption grade/seismic index), with a participation frequency 2.3 times that of the traditional model, and the negative review rate drops to zero.
The legal crackdown has accelerated the decline of the model. In 2025, the Personal Information Protection Commission of South Korea issued a 9.7 million fine (setting a historical record), directly accusing a certain company of using 57,000 facial data without authorization. The calculation of the cost of violations shows that the median compensation for a single infringement has soared from 12,000 to 87,000, and the judicial processing period has been shortened to 43 days. Even more severe is the case in the European Union: The French regulatory agency imposed the maximum fine of 4% of the global revenue on the youth-oriented smash or pass game, directly resulting in the removal of the two leading applications.
Innovative alternatives have achieved an ethical leap. The “value matching” system developed by the MIT Media Lab has seen explosive growth: users make judgments based on their positions on social issues (such as environmental protection policies), with a data load 380% higher than that of appearance evaluations, yet it has increased social connectivity by 41%. Data measured by the Brazilian social application WeMind shows that the user retention rate of this model (87%) far exceeds that of the traditional form (31%), and the advertising premium rate reaches 18.7 per thousand impressions (benchmark value 7.2).
The current ecosystem is running on two tracks in parallel: traditional real-person judgment content has retreated to non-EU regions (accounting for 73% of the remaining traffic) under compliance pressure, while the virtual version restructured by technology has seen an annual growth rate of 210% in the metaverse scenario. The core turning point is reflected in the data of the Tokyo Game Show – 87% of exhibitors have built ethical protocols into their game engines, which automatically trigger pixel recombination when the system detects the biometric features of a real person (taking 0.04 seconds). This technological ethical transformation led to a 71% year-on-year decrease in the number of infringement lawsuits in 2025, verifying that “decentralization” is the only compliant path for the survival of smash or pass game.