TikTok Takes Down 49 Million Videos For Content Violation In Six Months

Video-sharing platform TikTok took down 49 million videos from the site in the second half of 2019 for content violations, CNBC reported. The revelation was made in the company’s transparency report, which was published on Thursday.

In the report, TikTok — which is owned by China’s ByteDance — restated its enforcement policies, adding that less than 1 percent of the videos pulled from the site from July 1 to December 31, 2019, were in violation of its Community Guidelines and Terms of Service.

Per the report, the majority of the videos taken down were uploaded by users in just five countries. India topped the list with 16.5 million videos removed. Last week, India banned TikTok along with nearly 60 other Chinese-based apps. As The Inquisitr previously reported, the Indian government accused the Chinese companies of being involved in activities that were “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order.”

The country with the second-highest number of videos removed was the United States, which is also planning to ban TikTok and several other Chinese apps over national security concerns. Per the CNBC report, the video-sharing app pulled 4.6 million videos from the U.S.

? India made the highest number of requests to TikTok for user information and content removal between July and December last year, according to the Chinese short-video apps’ latest transparency report https://t.co/9U5Qj1Hf7Q @MeghaMandaviaET

— ETtech (@ETtech) July 9, 2020

Pakistan was ranked third on the list with 3.7 million videos removed, followed by the United Kingdom with more than 2 million videos removed. Russia, the last country on the top-five list, had 1.3 million videos taken down.

As stated in the transparency report, TikTok has started to roll out a new content moderation infrastructure in an attempt to be more open about the reasons behind content removal.

According to the report, in December 2019, when the new content moderation system took effect, 25.5 percent of the removed videos fell under the category of “adult nudity and sexual activities.” Additionally, 24.8 percent of videos were pulled from the site because of violations of the company’s child safety policies. About 21.5 percent of the content was removed for containing illegal activities and regulated goods, while 15.6 percent of videos were taken down for violating the site’s policy on suicide, self-harm, and dangerous acts.

The report also revealed that it received 500 removal requests from the governments of 26 countries. As reported by CNBC, TikTok received 302 requests from India, 100 requests from the U.S., 16 from Japan, 15 from Germany, 10 from the U.K., and 10 from Norway.

“Any information request we receive is carefully reviewed for legal sufficiency to determine, for example, whether the requesting entity is authorized to gather evidence in connection with a law enforcement investigation or to investigate an emergency involving imminent harm,” the transparency report stated, as quoted by CNBC.

Per the report, none of the videos were reported or detected for content guidelines violation in China or Hong Kong.