Community Guidelines Enforcement Report

July 1, 2022 – September 30, 2022
Published December 19, 2022

About this report

TikTok is a global entertainment platform fueled by the creativity of our diverse community. We strive to foster a fun and inclusive environment where people can create, find community, and be entertained. To maintain that environment, we take action upon content and accounts that violate our Community Guidelines or Terms of Service and regularly publish information about these actions to hold ourselves accountable to our community.

TikTok uses a combination of innovative technology and people to identify, review, and action content that violates our policies. This report provides quarterly insights into the volume and nature of content and accounts removed from our platform.

Analysis

TikTok’s Community Guidelines are designed to foster an entertaining experience that prioritizes safety, inclusion, and authenticity. Our policies apply to everyone and all content, and we strive to be consistent and equitable in our enforcement. This analysis provides additional context to supplement the data in this report.

Safety

This report has been expanded to bring additional transparency to our actions, progress, and challenges, and to stay accountable to our community. In an effort to provide useful and relevant information, we now provide additional insight on video removals across 50 markets, which represents approximately 90% of overall removal volume.

In addition, this report now includes information about the covert influence operations we identified and removed from our platform from July-September. When we investigate and remove these operations, we focus on behaviour and assessing linkages between accounts and techniques to determine if actors are engaging in a coordinated effort to mislead TikTok’s systems or our community. In each case, we believe that the people behind these activities coordinate with one another to misrepresent who they are and what they are doing. We know that covert influence operations will continue to evolve in response to our detection and networks may attempt to reestablish a presence on our platform. For example, in addition to the networks disclosed in this report, 365 additional accounts were identified as belonging to previously removed networks and were subsequently removed. As new deceptive behaviours emerge, we’ll continue to evolve our response, strengthen enforcement capabilities, and publish our findings.

Security

We continue to evolve and adapt our safeguards by investing in automated defenses to detect, block, and remove inauthentic accounts and engagement, and by improving our response speed and efficiency to address evolving threats. Due to the adversarial nature of malicious actors in this space, fluctuations in enforcement data for fake accounts is expected and part of our ongoing efforts to remove any content or activity that seeks to artificially inflate popularity on the platform.

TikTok has strict policies to protect users from fake, fraudulent, or misleading content, including ads. Advertiser accounts and ad content are held to these policies and must follow our Community Guidelines, Advertising Guidelines, and Terms of Service. While the cumulative total volume of ads removed for violating our advertising policies decreased this quarter, the volume of ads removed due to account-level actions increased. This is due in part to a change in our approach to ad violation enforcement and a strengthening of our account-level enforcement capabilities. We recognise that keeping advertisers and users safe is an ongoing effort, and we are committed to regularly reviewing and further strengthening our systems to combat ads that violate our policies.

Latest data

Download

Total videos removed/total videos, by quarter

NOTE: Total videos removed represent about 1% of all videos uploaded to TikTok. Video removal volumes referenced in this report include short-form video content (including image-based videos and stories).

Total videos removed/restored, by type and quarter

NOTE: Restored videos are reflected in both the removal volumes and restore volumes in the above chart.

Total video removal, by policy

NOTE: This chart shows the volume of videos removed by policy violation. A video may violate multiple policies and each violation is reflected. In certain rare circumstances, such as emergency situations or hardware outages, we may not always capture the exact video violation category. These videos are not represented in the above chart but are accounted for in absolute numbers throughout this report.

Removal rate, by quarter/policy

NOTE: Proactive removal means identifying and removing a video before it’s reported. Removal within 24 hours means removing the video within 24 hours of it being posted on our platform.

Total video removal and rates, by sub-policy

NOTE: Only videos that have been reviewed by moderators are included in the sub-policy dashboard.

Removal volume and rates, by country

NOTE: This chart shows the fifty markets with the largest volumes of removed videos and represents approximately 90% of overall removal volume.

Total account removal, by quarter and reason

NOTE: In addition to removing accounts for our violating Community Guidelines, we remove accounts determined to be spam, along with spam videos posted by those accounts. We also take proactive measures to prevent spam accounts from being created through automated means.

Fake engagement

NOTE: We take action to both remove and prevent likes, followers, and follow requests when we deem the activity to come through automated or inauthentic mechanisms.

Spam account activity

NOTE: When we remove accounts for spam, we also remove videos created by those accounts under our spam policies.

Covert influence operations

Covert influence operations networks identified and removed in Q3 2022	Detection source	Accounts in network	Followers of network
We assess that the network operated from Russia and targeted European countries, primarily Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. The individuals behind these accounts created localised inauthentic accounts and shared content in German, Italian and English using speech synthesis in these languages amplifying a pro-Russia viewpoint targeting discourse about the war in Ukraine.	Internal	1686	133,564
We assess that the network operated from Taiwan and targeted primarily Taiwanese audiences. The individuals behind these accounts used inauthentic accounts to create a high number of derogatory comments in addition to sharing content in Traditional Chinese targeting civic discourse in Taiwan.	Internal	59	60,765
We assess that the network operated from Kenya and targeted Kenyan audiences. The individuals behind these accounts shared content in English using inauthentic accounts and used deceptive behaviours to build an audience, such as the use of manipulated media targeting discourse on elections in Kenya.	External	14	50,200
We assess that the network operated primarily from Spain and targeted audiences in the United States. The individuals behind these accounts created and amplified partisan US civic content in English and Spanish using accounts posing as political parties, redirecting users to off platform fundraising links, merchandise links and closed information channels in an attempt to likely benefit financially through targeting civic discourse in the United States.	Internal	104	1,731,144
We assess that the network operated from Georgia and targeted Russian-speaking audiences, primarily based in Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Ukraine. The individuals behind these accounts shared content in Russian using inauthentic accounts posing as news outlets amplifying a pro-Russia viewpoint targeting discourse about the war in Ukraine.	Internal	18	85,068

Terminology

Networks operated from: Indicates geographic location of network operation based on technical and behavioral evidence from proprietary and open sources; TikTok may not be able to attribute networks to specific entities, individuals, or groups.
Detection source: Denoted as internal when presence of activity is identified solely through an internally driven investigation; external detection refers to investigations that originated through an external report which then led to an investigation.
Followers of network: Cumulative total number of accounts that followed any account within a network as of the date of that network’s removal.

Ads policy enforcement

NOTE: Ads may be removed either at the individual ad level or in bulk by taking action against an entire advertiser account.

Other reports

Was this helpful?

Yes