ISLAMABAD: With 9.85 million videos removed, Pakistan ranks second in the world for the largest number of videos taken down from the TikTok platform over violation of Community Guidelines during April-June 2021.

The world’s leading short-form video platform on Thursday released its global Community Guidelines Enforcement Report, highlighting that 81.51 million videos were removed globally from April to June.

However, this number was less than one per cent of the total uploaded content.

The highest number of 11.43 million videos were removed from the United States, followed by Pakistan. Brazil ranks third with 7.48 million videos removed.

41.3pc of content removed violated the minor safety policy of platform

The majority of 41.3pc content removed violated the minor safety policy of TikTok, while 20.9pc of the content related to criminal activities, promotion or trade of drugs, tobacco, alcohol, and other controlled substances.

The platform has said that nudity, sexually-explicit content and pornography were not allowed at TikTok, and of the total videos removed, 14 per cent violated this policy, and 6.8 per cent videos removed related to shamming, bulling or harassment.

The platform said that among the removed videos 93 per cent were deleted within 24 hours of the posting and 94.1 per cent of them were removed before being reported by a user, while 87.5 per cent of all the removed videos had zero views.

TikTok said that the automated system to detect, block and remove inauthentic accounts and engagement had helped improve speed and response to the evolving threats.

During April-June, the platform stopped 148.75 million fake accounts from being created and removed 8.54 million videos posted by spam accounts.

At the same time, TikTok remains one of the most controversial social media platforms around the world, including Pakistan, and it was currently banned in the country. The Chinese short, funny video-sharing platform has faced bans three times earlier in Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2021