In its latest Community Guidelines Enforcement Report for Q4, 2023, TikTok stated that it removed 176 million videos from its platform globally for violating its policies. For Nigeria, the Bytedance short video platform removed 1.7 million videos posted by Nigerian users during the same period.
According to the report, TikTok stated that the top 50 markets including Nigeria, where policy violations occurred, were responsible for about 90% of all content removals in the quarter.
The videos removed breached TikTok’s policies on integrity, authenticity, privacy, security, mental and behavioural health, safety, and civility, among other aspects.
Accounts
TikTok removed a total of 204 million accounts during the quarter under review, with fake accounts representing 88.7% of the total. It aid it removed 19.8 million accounts suspected to be under the age of 13.
Fake Engagement
During the same period under review, TikTok says it saw an increase in some of its fake engagement metrics globally. It removed 1.04 billion fake likes, a 200% increase over the prior of quarter July – September 2023 when it removed 349 million fake likes. The social media platform also took steps to remove 720 million fake followers and 4.9 billion fake follow requests. TikTok said its spam-detection systems worked as expected, accurately identifying and removing the accounts and content in question, ensuring that it was able to maintain the integrity of its platform.
Ads
In Q4 2023, TikTok noted a rise in the number of ads removed for breaching its advertising policies, along with a decline in ads removed due to account-level actions. The report indicates that 1.5 million ads were removed in Q4 2023, up from 1.3 million in Q3. However, there was a decrease in the volume of ads removed due to account-level actions, down from 6.5 million in Q3 to 5 million in Q4.
Even with these removals, TikTok remains a leading social media platform globally with over one billion monthly active users and its user-generated revenue witnessing significant growth. In 2023, TikTok achieved sales of $5 billion in the fourth quarter and a total of $16.1 billion for the year.
