Short-form online video sharing social media platform, Tiktok (owned by Chinese company ByteDance) has explained the 249.81% increase in content removals from Sub-Saharan Africa due to a strict policy relating to digital safety.
Helena Lersch, TikTok’s Vice President for Public Policy, revealed the significant upward trend at the second annual Africa Safer Internet Summit which was staged in the city of Cape Town, in South Africa, on Wednesday.
According to Lersch, the increase in content removals which dates back from the second quarter of 2023 to the fourth quarter of 2024 aligns with TikTok’s global standards for content moderation and community guidelines enforcement.
During the summit, TikTok’s Vice President for Public Policy, in her remarks, reaffirmed the platform’s commitment to user safety and the role of partnerships in creating a secure digital environment.
“Billions of people come to TikTok every day to create, share and connect and we’re continually evolving our policies and practices to safeguard our platform so our community can discover and do what they love.
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“This summit underscores the importance of collaboration between industry leaders and regulators in shaping a digital ecosystem that is both innovative and secure,” said Lersch.
Globally, between July and September 2024, TikTok removed more than 147 million videos, of which 118 million were detected and removed via automatically automated moderation technology, alongside human safety experts that enables the detection and removal of harmful content before it reaches users.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, TikTok removed over 7.5 million videos in Q3 2024, rising to more than 8 million in Q4 2024—an increase of 14.06% quarter-on-quarter. Notably, 99.5% of these videos were removed before any user reports, underscoring TikTok’s commitment to proactive moderation and swift action.
A similar trend was observed in North Africa, where TikTok removed over 7 million videos in both Q3 and Q4 of 2024. This represented an 8.70% increase in removals between the quarters, with 99.3% of these takedowns also occurring before user reports.
