TikTok removes 81 million videos for violating community guidelines

By Vincent Owino
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Summary

• Chinese social media giant ByteDance has removed more than 81.5 million videos worldwide from its TikTok platform for violating the Community Guidelines and terms of service.
• The company said in a statement Thursday that 41 percent of the deleted videos threatened the safety of minors, 20 percent were about illegal activities and 14 percent were sexually explicit.

Chinese social media giant ByteDance has removed more than 81.5 million videos worldwide from its TikTok platform for violating the Community Guidelines and terms of service.

The company said in a statement Thursday that 41 percent of the deleted videos threatened the safety of minors, 20 percent were about illegal activities and 14 percent were sexually explicit.

It also removed videos that encouraged violence, harassment and intimidation, hateful behavior, violent extremism, suicide, and dangerous acts.

TikTok said in the Community Guidelines Compliance Report for Q2 2021 that it has made progress and introduced new measures that improve proactive detection and protection against hateful behavior, harassment and bullying.

“To better advocate for these policies, TikTok has continued to hire policy experts in civil rights, equity and inclusion, and has implemented training on unconscious biases for its moderators,” the statement read.

“We also continue to deploy technology in additional markets that automatically detects and removes some categories of infringing content.”

The number of deleted videos that were reduced in the second quarter increased by 20 million from 61.9 million.