TikTok’s not all about just adding, there comes a time that even the most ‘addition-focused’ social media platforms take the necessary actions in order to remove; remove unwanted and harmful content and practices that is.
On that note, TikTok has today released its latest Content Removal Requests Report, which is an anthology that details all of the uploads TikTok has taken action against during the first half of the year due to violations of its community guidelines or via other official/legal request.
‘Just To Be Clear’
In addition to the above-mentioned, TikTok has also launched a new ‘Transparency Center’, which will basically serve as a hub for all its transparency reports moving forward. The introduction of a centralized archive will make it easier to keep tabs on the various historical trends that take place in its channels.
The benefit of having all these reports in one place is that it makes cross-referencing against previous numbers easier. It also makes it easier to spot previous trends and changes regarding changes within TikTok’s enforcement efforts, which is something that most social platforms lack – a dispersed update and changes log makes it somewhat difficult to track what changes were actually made and when.
To illustrate an example, in quarter two of this year (2021), TikTok took down more content in the US than in any other region, which, based on previous reports, is in line with its region-specific historical trends. The US in Q2 had 11.4 million videos removed due to multiple violation strikes, with Pakistan coming a close second (9.9 million), then Brazil (7.5 million).
Here’s the interesting bit, all three nations have held their positions at the top of TikTok’s listing in the last three reports, with fewer overall violations detected back in Q1. The new Transparency Center makes detecting and analyzing these kinds of historic shifts easier, thus making prediction and formulation of future efforts a bit more manageable and, more importantly, more precise.
In terms of removal reasons, in Q2, ‘Minor Safety’ was the top issue, making up around 41.3% of total removals, wit ‘Illegal Activities and Regulated Goods’ following at 20.9%, ‘Adult Nudity and Sexual Activities’ at 14%, and with ‘Violent and Graphic Content’ in last with 7.7%. TikTok’s proactive detection measures allow it to remove the majority of the content that violate its policies before users have the chance to see it, further nullifying any harmful ripple effects.
TikTok had this to say:
“We continue to evolve and adapt our safeguards by investing in automated defenses to detect, block, and remove inauthentic accounts and engagement, and by improving our speed and response to evolving threats. From April-June, we stopped 148,759,987 fake accounts from being created. We also removed 8,542,037 videos posted by spam accounts.”
The Wrap
With influence gradually becoming an active element of online monetization, more and more users look to use it as a way to greatly boost their monetary gain, leading to the utilization of fake accounts in order to sway public opinion. In turn, the rising issue of fallacious online activity prompts major social media platforms to also double-up their counter-measures and policies in order to effectively fight against these risks.
It’s a good update to TikTok’s transparency reports, providing even more essential oversight to ensure that the platform maintains due enforcement and limits the spread of potentially harmful content, making it a safer, more appealing environment to be on. Russia actually fined TikTok earlier this year for failing to remove content related to political protests, along with 1,898 other removal requests within the same period. Since then, TikTok has actually improved traction within the region, letting loose certain policy changes that allowed it to get even the attention of the Kremlin.
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