• TikTok says it removed 928 334 videos in South Africa during the most recent quarter.
• The Q3 Community Guidelines Enforcement Report looks at the proactive steps the platform takes to removing content that violates its terms of service.
• 83.6 percent of the removed videos were were addressed within 24 hours of posting.

Time for another TikTok story, and no, not one related to who will be buying the US operations of the wildly popular social media platform. Instead TikTok South Africa has detailed the efforts it has been making when it comes to policing its app, and removing videos and content that violates its terms of service.

As we have seen on X (formerly Twitter) in recent years, the amount of misinformation and explicit content appearing in its For You timeline has made it near impossible to scroll and not see something NSFW or worse.

TikTok unpacked its latest efforts in the recent Q3 Community Guidelines Enforcement Report, where South Africa saw a staggering 928 334 videos removed during the period of July and September of last year.

Highlighting the effectiveness of its detection tools, TikTok also boasted that 83.6 percent of the removed videos were done within 24 hours of posting.

“With over a billion people using TikTok globally, and millions of pieces of content posted every day, TikTok continues to invest in technologies which improve content understanding and assess potential risks, allowing the platform to remove harmful content before it reaches viewers. In July and September 2024 globally, the platform removed over 147 million videos and of these, 118 million were removed through automation,” explained TikTok in a release with Hypertext.

“With a proactive detection rate now at 98.2% globally, TikTok is more efficient than ever at addressing harmful content before users encounter it. In South Africa, more than 97.9% of all content was removed before a community member reported it to TikTok,” it added.

It will therefore be interesting to see how those numbers are affected when a US or US-based company takes over the reigns of the operations in the region, as President Trump has given 30 days notice on what decision will be made on the fate of the platform.

Added to this is how lax US big tech companies have been recently regarding misinformation and accuracy of what is shared on their platforms, such as Meta doing away with fact checkers Stateside because it simply lost the will to do so during the second Trump term.

Hopefully though, TikTok will remain vigilant when it comes to upholding its terms of service, especially as many South Africans are now reliant on it for getting their news and staying in the know about what’s happening in the country.

“As TikTok continues to invest in cutting-edge moderation technologies, its commitment to transparency and platform safety remains at the forefront, ensuring a secure environment for its diverse user base across South Africa and globally,” it concluded.

To check out the full report for yourself, head here.

[Image – Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash]