Community Guidelines Enforcement Report
October 1, 2023 – December 31, 2023
Published March 19, 2024
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.
Latest data
DownloadSafety
As our platform continues to grow, we remain focused on implementing robust safety strategies. We continue to respond vigorously to the evolving ways that people attempt to circumvent our rules. In addition, we are investing in proactively and expediently removing violative content and accounts. As part of our commitment to transparency, we’re now providing more detail on how often videos have been viewed before being removed.
Israel-Hamas war
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, 2023, we provided regular updates on our extensive actions to safeguard our community, including mobilizing significant resources and personnel, introducing product features, and working with experts.
To stay accountable to the communities we serve, we have also been transparent about the efficacy of our efforts through regular disclosures on content removals. From the start of the war through to the end of 2023, we removed more than 1.5 million videos and suspended more than 46,000 livestreams in Israel and Palestine for violating our Community Guidelines, including content promoting Hamas, hate speech, terrorism and misinformation.
We also remain vigilant against deceptive behaviors. From October 7 through to the end of 2023, we removed more than 169 million fake accounts globally, and we have removed about 1.2 million bot comments on content tagged with hashtags related to the war.
Video removals and LIVE suspensions relative to publish
Total removals and restorations, by content type
Removal rates, view distribution, and report response times
Policy distribution of removals
Moderation by market and language
Covert influence operations
Accounts targeting political discourse in Panama
We assess that this network operated from Venezuela and Panama and targeted a Panamanian audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts and posted content in Spanish at scale in order to artificially amplify narratives favorable to the political party “Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD)”, thereby attempting to manipulate Panamanian elections discourse.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 2,254 | 25,132 |
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 in Indonesian in order to artificially amplify narratives favorable to a specific presidential candidate, thereby attempting to manipulate Indonesian elections discourse.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 817 | 7,849 |
Accounts targeting 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 in Ukrainian at scale in order to artificially amplify pro-Ukrainian narratives and monetize off-platform traffic generation, thereby attempting to manipulate discourse about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 328 | 711,288 |
Accounts targeting war between Russia and Ukraine
We assess that this network operated from Iraq and targeted an Iraqi audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts and posted content in Arabic to promote anti-US sentiment and artificially amplify pro-Russian narratives, thereby attempting to manipulate discourse about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 195 | 173,327 |
Accounts promoting Syria and targeting war between Hamas and Israel
We assess that this network operated from Egypt and Sweden and targeted Shia Muslim populations in Middle Eastern and European countries. The individuals behind this network impersonated top creators and coordinated over intra-network livestreams, while posting content in Arabic to amplify narratives promoting the current Syrian regime and pro-Shia Islam content. The network also posted narratives favorable to Palestine, thereby attempting to manipulate discourse about the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 169 | 1,085,275 |
Accounts targeting war between Russia and Ukraine
We assess that this network operated from Russia and targeted a Ukrainian audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts and posted content in Ukrainian to amplify pro-Russian narratives, thereby attempting to manipulate discourse about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 143 | 170,455 |
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 and posted content in Arabic in order to covertly promote the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), along with Iranian military aims in the Middle East.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 84 | 154,697 |
Accounts promoting Shia Islam and targeting war between Hamas and Israel
We assess that this network operated from Azerbaijan and targeted an Azerbaijani audience globally. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts and posted content in Azerbaijani to artificially amplify pro-Iranian narratives alongside narratives critical of the US, Israel and Turkey.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 57 | 39,609 |
Accounts targeting political discourse in Germany
We assess that this network operated from Germany and targeted a German audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts, including inauthentic news accounts, and posted content in German to amplify narratives favorable to the political party “Alternative for Germany (AfD)”, and launder Russian state affiliated media talking points, thereby attempting to manipulate political discourse in Germany.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 32 | 445,111 |
Accounts targeting political discourse in Taiwan
We assess that this network operated from Taiwan and targeted a Taiwanese audience. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts, including inauthentic news accounts, and posted content in Mandarin Chinese in order to amplify pro-China narratives around cross-strait relations.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 21 | 4,022 |
Accounts targeting war between Russia and Ukraine
We assess that this network operated from Russia and Germany and targeted the Russian diaspora in Germany. The individuals behind this network created inauthentic accounts and posted content in Russian to artificially amplify pro-Russian narratives, thereby attempting to manipulate discourse about the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
| Detection source | Accounts in network | Followers of network |
| Internal | 12 | 56,715 |
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.
Platform security
Our priority is keeping our global community safe, and we continue to invest in robust measures that actively enforce and defend the security of our platform. We prohibit: (1) access to any part of TikTok through unauthorized methods; (2) attempts to obtain sensitive, confidential, commercial, or personal information; or (3) any abuse of the security, integrity, or reliability of our platform.
To strengthen and test our internal defenses, we continue to collaborate with HackerOne on our global bug bounty program, encouraging security researchers to proactively report security vulnerabilities so we can fix them. In the fourth quarter of 2023, our HackerOne bug bounty program resolved 36 reports, rewarding over $87,000 in bounties. TikTok also participated in HackerOne’s Ambassador World Cup, inviting the top ethical hackers from around the world to test our defenses in a live hacking event.
In addition to our investment in platform security, we strive to educate our community on how to stay safe online, and what tools and options TikTok offers for security and privacy. We continued our TikTok Facts series in the fourth quarter of 2023 by debunking common claims around our personalized advertising tools, and continue to share resources with our community to reflect important information about security and privacy at TikTok.
Spam and fake engagement
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 are steadfast in our commitment to promptly identify and remove any accounts, content, or activities that seek to artificially boost popularity on our platform. During the fourth quarter of 2023, we saw an increase in some of our fake engagement metrics, as seen in the charts below. Our spam-detection systems worked as expected, accurately identifying and removing the accounts and content in question, ensuring that we were able to maintain the integrity of our platform.
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 fourth 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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