TikTok removed 100 million user videos

They are well 104,54 million the videos that TikTok removed in the first six months of 2020 and, it will seem strange but so it is, they are few: this number just represents the1% of the total of the videos uploaded to the ByteDance platform. Those one hundred million videos were deleted because they did not comply with community guidelines or terms of service.

Most of the removed videos were uploaded by users in India (37,68 million) and in the United States (9,82 million). The data comes from TikTok itself, which published its annual transparency report which shows that about 96,4% of removed videos were removed from the platform even before users sent a report, while 90,3% are was removed before it was displayed. 30,9% of the removed videos contained nudity or sexual activity, 22,3% contained child abuse, and 19,6% related to illegal activities or regulated goods.

TikTok grants the data to law enforcement

TikTok also claims to have complied with "valid" requests from law enforcement and governments around the world, granting user information following an appropriate legal procedure.

India is the country that sent the largest number of these requests: 1.206, of which TikTok satisfied 79%. The United States follows with 290 requests, of which 85% were satisfied. Israel made 41 requests, Germany 37 requests.

In all this transparency, from the Chinese company, one thing immediately catches the eye: TikTok does not claim to have received any request for access to user data from the Chinese government.

Global issues on TikTok

Having now become one global platform, TikTok also had to deal with global issues and had to respond to them. For example, it has launched a fackt checking program in eight markets to help verify misleading content, such as disinformation on COVID-19, on elections and climate change.

Finally, TikTok also introduced in-app public service announcements on hashtags related to divisive topics such as Black Lives Matter and conspiracy theories like QAnon.

TikTok removed 100 million user videos