TikTok removed 89M videos, 6M violations, 173M bot accounts, 3M advs in H2 2020

TikTok reveals its H2 2020 Transparency Report.

TikTok has released its fourth global Transparency Report. This Transparency Report covers the second half of 2020 and provides visibility into the volume and nature of content removed for violating TikTok’s Community Guidelines or Terms of Service, with additional insight into the company’s work to counter misinformation related to Covid-19 and elections.

The report also includes how TikTok responds to law enforcement requests for information, government requests for content removals, and intellectual property removal requests. TikTok has added a number of new data to this report in an effort to be ever more transparent, including accounts removed, spam accounts and videos removed, videos restored after they were appealed by the video’s creator, specific policy insights and ads rejected for violating advertising policies.

Here are some of the key insights from the report:

  • 89,132,938 videos were removed globally in the second half of 2020 for violating TikTok’s Community Guidelines or Terms of Service, which is less than 1% of all videos uploaded on TikTok.
  • 4% of these videos were removed before a user reported them, 83.3% were removed before they received any views, and 93.5% were removed within 24 hours of being posted.
  • 6,144,040 accounts were removed for violating Community Guidelines.
  • 9,499,881 spam accounts were removed along with 5,225,800 spam videos posted by those accounts. TikTok prevented 173,246,894 accounts from being created through automated means.
  • 3,501,477 ads were rejected for violating advertising policies and guidelines.

TikTok continues to work with public health experts to help community stay safe and informed on Covid-19 and vaccines. TikTok makes public health information available throughout the app as they also work to counter misinformation. Here are some results from these efforts during the second half of 2020:

  • Covid-19 information hub was viewed 2,625,049,193 times.
  • Banners directing viewers to the Covid-19 information hub were added to 3,065,213
  • Public service announcements, PSAs, on hashtags directing users to the WHO and local public health resources were viewed 38,010,670,666
  • 51,505 videos were removed for promoting Covid-19 misinformation. Of these videos, 86% were removed before they were reported, 87% were removed within 24 hours of being uploaded to TikTok, and 71% had zero views.