TikTok has removed more than 360,000 videos from its platform in Kenya during the second quarter of 2024. This sweeping action represents just 0.3% of total videos uploaded in the country, indicating the platform’s massive scale in the country.
The cleanup operation, detailed in TikTok’s Q2 2024 Community Guidelines Enforcement Report, showcases the company’s growing reliance on AI to police content. Perhaps most notable is the platform’s proactive detection rate: 99.1% of violating videos were removed before users reported them, with 95% taken down within 24 hours of posting.
“With over a billion people and millions of pieces of content posted to our platform every day, we continue to prioritise and enhance TikTok’s automated moderation technology as such technology enables faster and consistent removal of content that violates our rules,” said TikTok in its report.
The company’s AI-driven approach has yielded impressive results worldwide, with automated systems now handling 80% of video removals, a substantial increase from 62% just one year ago. This technological advancement has pushed TikTok’s global proactive detection rate to a record-high 98.2%.
Age restriction enforcement emerged as a key priority during the cleanup. The platform banned approximately 60,000 Kenyan accounts during this period, with the vast majority, 57,262 accounts, suspended due to suspected users being under the age of 13. This aggressive stance on age verification supports growing global concerns about young users’ safety on social media platforms.
These developments come at a crucial time for TikTok, as the platform faces intense scrutiny in other markets, particularly the US. The company is currently engaged in a legal battle over its Chinese ownership, with US authorities expressing concerns about data security and potential surveillance, allegations that both TikTok and Chinese authorities strongly deny.
ByteDance, the company that owns the platform, has until January to sell TikTok’s US assets or risk seeing the app banned in the country.
