TikTok removes 62 million videos for breaking its rules in just three months

TikTok removed nearly 62 million videos from the platform in the first three months of 2021, the firm’s latest transparency report has revealed.

The video-sharing service said this accounted for less than 1% of all videos uploaded to the app.

According to the social media giant’s transparency report for January to March 2021, 61,951,327 videos were taken down, with more than 91% removed before they were reported by a user and just under 82% before they received any views.

TikTok, like many other social media platforms, uses technology to help stop content that breaks its rules, and the company said 8.8 million of the removed videos were flagged and blocked automatically by its technology.

The video app has also come under scrutiny in recent months over concerns that children under the age of 13 are regularly accessing it, and TikTok revealed it had removed more than 7.2 million accounts because they believed they belonged to someone under the age of 13 during the first three months of the year.

Campaigners have called for some form of age verification to be introduced on social media to prevent underage users being exposed to potentially unsafe or inappropriate content.

Elsewhere on child safety, TikTok’s report revealed that 36.8% of the videos removed from the platform were taken down because they broke the firm’s rules around child safety – higher than any other type of content.

In response to criticism of the firm’s policies, TikTok has recently introduced a number of new safety features aimed at its younger users, including boosting privacy settings by default on the accounts of young users, and limiting features such as direct messaging and livestreaming to those aged 16 and over.

“Millions of people around the world come to TikTok to express themselves creatively and be entertained,” the firm said in its report.

In order to promote a safe and welcoming environment, we work to uphold our Community Guidelines by removing accounts and content that don’t adhere to our policies.

“We strive to be transparent about how we enforce our policies to continue building trust with our community members. We regularly publish these reports with that aim in mind.”