TikTok removes over 30m videos in Pakistan for violating guidelines

TikTok has ramped up its automated moderation in Pakistan, deleting harmful content before it reaches users.

TikTok has removed more than 30.7 million videos from its platform in Pakistan during 2024 as part of efforts to enhance content moderation and maintain a safe online environment.

The video-sharing platform made the announcement in its second-quarter Community Enforcement Report, as reported by Express news.

The report reveals that 99.5% of these videos were taken down before users had the chance to report them, with 97% being removed within 24 hours of being uploaded.

TikTok, which sees over a billion daily visits, continues to prioritise the improvement of its automated moderation system to ensure harmful content is swiftly dealt with.

In the second quarter of 2024 alone, TikTok removed over 178 million videos globally, 144 million of which were deleted through automation.

This highlights the platform’s advanced detection technology that enables real-time removal of harmful content.

TikTok’s growing reliance on automation is part of its broader strategy to maintain a safe environment for its global community.

The platform now removes 98.2% of harmful content before it reaches users, underscoring the effectiveness of its moderation efforts.

These technical advancements have allowed TikTok to stay ahead of rising content volumes, ensuring that harmful materials are identified and removed before they can cause harm.

TikTok removed 20m video clips in Pakistan in 3 three months

Earlier, in its Community Guidelines Enforcement Report for 2024’s first quarter, the platform said that approximately 93.9 per cent of videos that violated the guidelines were removed within 24 hours of posting, and the proactive removal rate for the quarter stood at 99.8pc globally.

Meanwhile, it said that proactive measures led to the removal of 166,997,307 videos worldwide, representing about 0.9pc of all videos uploaded on the platform.

“A substantial portion of these, 129,335,793 videos, were identified and removed through automated detection technologies, while 6,042,287 videos were reinstated upon further review.”

It said that it was also disclosing the number of comments removed and filtered by its comment safety tools for the first time in a bid to enhance transparency.

“TikTok has removed and filtered 976,479,946 comments using comment safety tools during this three-month period."

TikTok lays off hundreds as AI takes over content moderation

A few days ago, TikTok, owned by ByteDance, laid off hundreds of employees worldwide, including around 500 in Malaysia, as the platform shifted toward AI-powered content moderation.

The layoffs, which were communicated via email, were part of a broader effort to optimize TikTok's global moderation operations.

Human moderators, who had faced difficult working conditions, including low pay and exposure to distressing content, were gradually replaced as AI technology became more capable of handling violations such as nudity, violence, and other policy breaches.

Despite the growing role of AI, TikTok’s moderation system still involved human reviewers for content flagged for appeals.

These layoffs occurred amid increasing regulatory pressure in regions like Malaysia, where the government pushed social media firms to improve content moderation to combat cyber offenses.