TikTok removes over 15m videos in Pakistan for violating community guidelines

PAKISTAN: TikTok has removed 15,351,388 videos in Pakistan, the video platform said in a statement Friday.

The development was reported in the platform's latest Community Guidelines Enforcement Report for the second quarter of 2022 released today.

Following the action, Pakistan has become the second country in the world for having the largest volume of videos taken down for community guidelines violations from April 1 to  June 30, 2022.

According to TikTok's report, 97% of videos from Pakistan were removed within 24 hours of being posted for violating community guidelines, 98% were removed before a user reported them, and 97% were removed before receiving any views.

The action was taken by TikTok to build on its commitment to a multi-pronged approach to stop misinformation on the platform.

The short-video messaging application is also opening state-of-the-art cyber-incident monitoring and investigative response centres in Washington DC, Dublin, and Singapore this year.

The report reflects TikTok's ongoing commitment to earn trust by being accountable while working to be safe and welcoming.

"The latest iteration of the report shows improvements made in countering misinformation and efforts made in the investment in digital literacy education to help get ahead of the problem at scale," TikTok said in a statement.

The short-video messaging application further added in its report that 113,809,300 videos were removed globally, which represents about 1% of all videos uploaded to TikTok.

"In addition to removing accounts for violating Community Guidelines, the platform also removed accounts determined to be spam, along with spam videos posted by those accounts," the statement read.

TikTok also took proactive measures to prevent spam accounts from being created through automated means. Since last quarter, TikTok identified 33 new misinformation claims, resulting in the removal of 58,000 videos from the platform globally.

The platform added that the total volume of ads removed for violating advertising policies and guidelines decreased. This is due in part to efforts to strengthen account-level detection and enforcement strategies, which have helped improve the ads ecosystem and create better experiences for both users and advertisers.

The short-video-making application also said that it is introducing a new penalty system where if someone violates one of its Community Guidelines, their account will accrue a strike for this specific policy violation.

"The platform will keep a count of the number of strikes accumulated, and if the person continues posting violative content, they will be permanently banned. The number of strikes leading to a permanent ban depends on the severity of the violation, and the number of total violations," TikTok said.