How “isolation challenge” videos on TikTok act as lures for online scams

Would you be willing to live alone in a remote Norwegian cabin for 90 days in exchange for $8 million? What about forgoing your phone to stay in a tropical overwater villa for $3.7 million? Thousands of videos promoting “isolation challenges” like these ones have been circulating on TikTok for over a year. (Identical videos can be found on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.)

The eye-catching locations are not named but they are typically real holiday destinations, such as The Acorn at HoneyTree in the United States, Soneva Jani in the Maldives, and Woodnest in Norway. The videos themselves are also real, often ripped off from creators who actually visited these places.

The isolation challenge, however, is a hoax. The videos are used to lure people into advance fee scams.

“We 100% deny that there is such a challenge authorized or organized by anyone here,” said Jacob Rhodes, the co-owner of HoneyTree. Torstein Bjorland of Woodnest similarly told Indicator they knew nothing about a reward scheme allegedly involving the property.

I found 192 TikTok videos¹ for isolation challenges with 54.8 million cumulative views. After being contacted, a TikTok spokesperson said that the platform had deleted 960 related videos, banned more than 40 users, taken targeted action on the #isolationchallenge hashtag, and that it would continue to investigate the matter. They added that in the last quarter of 2025, TikTok removed 97% of violative spam content before it was reported to the platform.