Community Guidelines Enforcement Report
July 1, 2023 – September 30, 2023
Published December 13, 2023
About this report
At TikTok, our mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy. We prioritize safety, well-being and integrity so that our community can feel free to create, make connections, and be entertained.
More than 40,000 trust and safety professionals work alongside innovative technology to maintain and enforce our robust Community Guidelines, Terms of Service and Advertising Policies, which apply to all content on our platform. This latest report provides insight into these efforts, showing how we continue to uphold trust, authenticity, and accountability.
As part of our continued efforts to make it easy to study the TikTok platform, we’re now providing additional removal data by policy category for the 50 markets with the highest volumes of removed content in the downloadable data file below. These markets account for approximately 90% of all content removals for this quarter.
Latest data
DownloadSafety
Building on our commitment from the last report, we are publishing our second quarterly update on TikTok LIVE enforcement. TikTok LIVE continues to be an important part of the TikTok experience, fostering real-time entertainment between creators and their communities. Despite the increase in suspended livestream sessions this quarter, the proportion of total livestreams suspended remained consistent at 1.5%, indicating that our enforcement measures are scaling with the platform’s growth.
Video removals and LIVE suspensions relative to publish
Total removals and restorations, by content type
Removal rates and report response times
Policy distribution of removals
Moderation by market and language
Covert influence operations
Accounts targeting the war between Russia and Ukraine
We assess that this network operated from Russia and targeted a European audience, including Germany and Ukraine. The individuals behind this network created a large number of inauthentic accounts in order to covertly amplify pro-Russian foreign policy viewpoints in Europe within the context of the war between Russia and Ukraine.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal/External | 12,820 | 847,760 |
Accounts targeting political discourse in Cambodia
We assess that this network operated from Cambodia and targeted a Cambodian audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts and hyper posted content in order to artificially amplify specific narratives favorable to the Cambodian People’s Party, targeting Cambodia elections discourse.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 3,046 | 1,930,179 |
Accounts targeting the war between Russia and Ukraine
We assess that this network operated from Ukraine and targeted a Ukrainian audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts and posted content at scale, in Ukrainian, artificially amplifying narratives aiming to raise money for the Ukrainian military.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 2,350 | 81,570 |
Accounts targeting political discourse in Indonesia
We assess that this network operated from Indonesia and targeted an Indonesian audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts and posted content at scale, artificially amplifying narratives favorable to a specific presidential candidate, targeting Indonesian elections discourse.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 706 | 10,699 |
Accounts targeting discourse about China
We assess that this network operated from China and targeted a global audience, including the US and Japan. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts and posted across multiple social media platforms in order to artificially amplify pro-China narratives.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 636 | 29,757 |
Accounts targeting political discourse in Thailand
We assess that this network operated from Thailand and targeted a Thai audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts and posted content at scale in order to artificially amplify specific narratives favorable to a Thai Royalist candidate, targeting Thailand elections discourse.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 457 | 4,069 |
Accounts targeting political discourse in Thailand
We assess that this network operated from Thailand and targeted a Thai audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts and posted content at scale in order to artificially amplify narratives favorable to the political party “Change”, targeting Thailand elections discourse.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 377 | 741,225 |
Accounts targeting the war between Russia and Ukraine
We assess that this network operated from Ukraine and targeted a Ukrainian audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts in order to amplify misinformation videos, targeting discourse about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 302 | 57,806 |
Accounts targeting political discourse in Iraq
We assess that this network operated from Iraq and targeted an Iraqi audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts in order to covertly promote Iranian military aims in the Middle East.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 229 | 242,409 |
Accounts targeting political discourse in Ecuador
We assess that this network operated from Ecuador and targeted an Ecuadorian audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts in order to artificially amplify narratives critical of a leftist political movement.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 143 | 12,353 |
Accounts targeting the war between Russia and Ukraine
We assess that this network operated from Russia and targeted Russian and Ukrainian audiences, as well as the Russian speaking audience in Europe. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts in order to artificially amplify pro-Russian narratives, targeting discourse about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 133 | 199,569 |
Accounts targeting political discourse in Serbia
We assess that this network operated from Serbia and targeted a Serbian audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts and posted content at scale in order to amplify narratives favorable to the Serbian Progressive Party, targeting Serbian elections discourse.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 77 | 5,009 |
Accounts targeting Slovakian foreign relations with Russia
We assess that this network operated from Slovakia and targeted a Slovakian audience. The individuals behind this network created opaque accounts which engaged in inauthentic audience building methods in order to inauthentically amplify anti-EU, anti-NATO and pro-Russian content in Slovakia.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 69 | 2,154 |
Accounts targeting political discourse in Malaysia
We assess that this network operated from Malaysia and targeted a Malaysian audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts in order to artificially amplify narratives critical of political parties Barisan Nasional, United Malays National Organization and Pakatan Harapan, and favorable to Perikatan Nasional, targeting Malaysia elections discourse.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 53 | 174,472 |
Accounts targeting political discourse in Serbia
We assess that this network operated from Serbia and targeted a Serbian audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts in order to artificially amplify narratives critical to opposition of the Serbian Progressive Party and critical to independent media outlets.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 38 | 37,361 |
Accounts targeting the war between Russia and Ukraine
We assess that this network operated from Russia and targeted users from Germany, Italy, Turkey, Serbia, Czechia, Poland and Greece using local languages. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts, including fictitious news agencies in order to artificially amplify pro-Russian narratives, targeting the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 19 | 217,008 |
NOTE: Disrupting a covert influence operation requires layered operations, including investigation, removal, and post-mortem analysis. We report the removal of these networks during the quarter in which the full operations process has been completed.
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.
Security
Protecting our community remains our top priority. We are committed to investing in robust measures that prioritize user safety, data protection, and regulatory compliance. Transparency about these efforts to safeguard the platform is a key element in maintaining this commitment. Our TikTok Facts series aims to set the record straight about our privacy and data security practices. We recently shared a deep dive into our approach to data storage and how we secure our community’s personal information, and we will continue to share resources with our community to reflect important information about security and privacy at TikTok.
In line with our commitment to security, we marked the three-year anniversary of our global bug bounty program with HackerOne. This program encourages security researchers to proactively report security vulnerabilities so we can fix them. In Q3 2023, our HackerOne program triaged and resolved 59 reports, paying out over $112,000 in rewards.
As always, we remain vigilant in our efforts to detect external threats and safeguard the platform from fake accounts and engagement. These threats persistently probe and attack our systems, leading to occasional fluctuations in the reported metrics within these areas. Despite this, we remain steadfast in our commitment to promptly identify and remove any accounts, content, or activities that seek to artificially boost popularity on our platform. As we navigate an ever-evolving threat landscape, TikTok remains dedicated to preserving the integrity of our community and strengthening our cyber response to adversarial actors.
Spam and fake engagement
Ads
Advertiser accounts and ad content must comply with our Community Guidelines, Advertising Policies, and Terms of Service. TikTok has strict policies to protect our community from fake, fraudulent or misleading ad content. Ensuring the safety of users and advertisers is an ongoing commitment. During the third quarter of 2023, there was an increase in the volume of ads removed for violating our advertising policies and a decrease in the volume of ads removed due to account-level actions. We are continually reviewing and strengthening our systems to identify new patterns and quickly and accurately remove ads that violate our policies. By upholding strict policies, leveraging advanced detection mechanisms, and continuously improving our systems, we strive to foster an advertising experience that is trustworthy, enjoyable, and aligned with the values of our vibrant TikTok community.
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