TikTok has shared the results of its global transparency report for the second half of 2020, highlighting the efforts of the Australian government to remove content from the platform.
The Australian government made 32 requests to remove or restrict content, according to the report, with only the Pakistani and Russian governments making more requests.
“When we receive requests from government agencies to restrict or remove content on our
platform in accordance with local laws, we review all material in line with our Community Guidelines, Terms of Service, and applicable law, and take the appropriate action,” the report said.
“If we believe that a request isn’t legally valid or doesn’t violate our standards, we may restrict the availability of the reported content in the country where it is alleged to be illegal or we may take no action.”
And while governments can specifically request for content to be taken down from the platform, the report shows that TikTok’s automated monitoring services are doing a good job of protecting users from offensive content.
Of the 89,132,938 videos that were removed from the platform for violating Community Guidelines or Terms of Service during the period, 92.4 per cent were removed before a user reported them. 83.3 per cent were removed before anyone viewed them and 93.5 per cent within 24 hours.
With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to dominate the news cycle and the rollout of various vaccines beginning, TikTok has worked hard to minimise the spread of misinformation around these topics.
The platform’s COVID-19 information hub was viewed 2,625,049,193, while public service announcements (PSAs) on hashtags directing users to the WHO and local public health resources were viewed 38,010,670,666 times.