TikTok removes 12.5m Pakistani videos over guidelines violation

Content violated guidelines for ‘safety, inclusion, and authenticity'

ISLAMABAD:

With 12.5 million videos removed, Pakistan ranks second in the world for the largest number of videos taken down from the TikTok platform over violation of community guidelines during the first quarter of 2022.

The world’s leading short-form video platform on Tuesday released its global Community Guidelines Enforcement Report, highlighting that 102.3 million videos were removed globally from the platform, which is approximately 1 per cent of the total uploaded content.

The highest numbers of videos were removed from the United States, ranking first in terms of removal rate.

TikTok explained that the videos were removed for violating its "robust set of community guidelines that are designed to foster an experience that prioritizes safety, inclusion, and authenticity".

According to the report, the rate of deletion of any video before it was viewed in Pakistan was 96.5 per cent while the rate of deletion within 24 hours was 97.3 per cent.

It revealed that in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the security team kept tabs on the videos posted related to the war and deleted 41,191 videos, 87 per cent of which violated the policies concerning harmful and misinformation.

TikTok also labelled content from 49 Russian state-controlled media accounts. The platform also identified and removed 6 networks and 204 accounts globally for coordinated efforts to influence public opinion and mislead users about their identities.

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The report also revealed that the total volume of ads removed for violating TikTok's advertising policies and guidelines increased in the first quarter of 2022.

The report also showed that the total volume of ads removed for violating TikTok's advertising policies and guidelines increased in the first quarter of 2022, the press release concluded.

It may be mentioned here that Tiktok’s special focus on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came after the platform became an information battleground during the conflict with many doctored videos going viral.

In order to address the problem, the platform swung into action and put up a team to manually review disturbing content, using artificial intelligence technology to flag such material.

Last year, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) restored the services of TikTok on assurances of the popular video-sharing platform to control “immoral/indecent content” after nearly a five-month suspension.

The Chinese video-sharing platform had also assured that the users who are continuously involved in uploading unlawful content will be blocked from using the platform, after PTA officials held a detailed discussion with regard to content moderation on the social networking app in line with the local laws and societal norms.