TikTok Shop Safety Report
July 1, 2023 – December 31, 2023
Published April 30, 2024
About TikTok Shop
TikTok Shop is defining a new shopping culture—one that is rooted in discovery and fosters connections among sellers, creators, and the TikTok community. Since 2021, TikTok Shop has expanded from Southeast Asia to the United Kingdom, and most recently, to the United States in 2023, growing a community of more than 15 million sellers around the world. This new shopping experience empowers people to discover and buy products from their favorite creators and brands while providing brands, sellers, and creators the tools to sell products directly on the TikTok app.
Through shoppable content formats like short videos, live shopping events, and a dedicated product marketplace, businesses large and small can tap into the authenticity and creativity of the TikTok platform to revolutionize their growth strategies and offer our community access to a diverse array of products.
From discovery to purchase, TikTok is committed to providing a safe and secure environment that allows our community to shop with confidence. This TikTok Shop Safety Report provides information about our ongoing work to provide a trustworthy shopping environment by ensuring sellers and their products abide by our TikTok Shop policies.
About This Report
TikTok Shop is driven by the passion and creativity of our sellers, creators, and their communities, and we want to make sure that they have a safe and secure experience. A big part of that is building trust and being transparent about how we are enforcing our policies. That’s why we’re delighted to share our first TikTok Shop Safety Report, which we’ll continue to update going forward.
Policy Enforcement
TikTok Shop maintains a range of policies that apply to sellers and creators, as well as their products, in order to keep our community safe. In addition to these TikTok Shop policies, everyone must adhere to TikTok’s Community Guidelines and Terms of Service. These policies reflect TikTok’s values and our commitment to ensuring that TikTok Shop remains a trusted destination for online consumers.
Commitment to Customer Trust
Our pledge is to provide customers with a shopping experience that they can trust, while offering a diverse array of authentic products. We rigorously enforce measures against the sale of counterfeit goods and other prohibited items, and continue to invest in pioneering solutions to ensure the authenticity of products sold.
- Investing in tools and technology
- Working to keep our community safe
- Protecting brand and IP
Investing in tools and technology:
As part of our investments to keep TikTok Shop and our users safe, we use a combination of tools and technologies before and after products are listed and content is uploaded. We use machine learning models and algorithms to detect potential instances of fraud, infringement, unsafe content, or violative product listings.
These advanced detection models are specifically trained to identify content and products that may infringe upon the intellectual property rights of brands and other rights holders. Upon detection, suspect products undergo thorough review by our team of trained investigators, and the infringing content is promptly removed from our platform.
Our policies apply to all areas of our platform, including livestreams, videos, product listings, and our Shop tab. Leveraging a range of industry-leading indicators, our algorithms pinpoint potential violations, allowing for swift action to be taken against violative products and content.
Working to keep our community safe:
We take a range of proactive steps, at both the pre-listing and post-listing stages, in our efforts to maintain a safe and secure environment where businesses can establish and expand. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Requiring all sellers to provide documentation to verify their identity, business type, and their eligibility to operate that business. We scrutinize these applications closely to comply with all applicable regulations.
- Once a seller is approved, they are placed on probation for a period of time, meaning there is a period of time where merchants can learn the rules and be eased into their experience on the platform.
- Enforcement of our TikTok Shop policies, which are available through our Policy Center and apply to both sellers and creators. Our community can also report any content that they believe breaks our rules for review.
We maintain and continuously update a range of policies which cover issues such as counterfeits, illegal activity, prohibited and restricted products, as well as customer service and order fulfillment requirements. We also provide a centralized hub, our TikTok Shop Academy, which provides our community with engaging content, including videos, that teaches them about the rules of TikTok Shop. In order to reflect regional needs and nuances, our policies may vary.
Enforcement:
If we find that any of our sellers have breached our policies, we take action, which could include removing their products, suspending the e-commerce features available to them, or de-activating their account.
- Onboarded more than 6 million sellers onto TikTok Shop and assessed their products before they went onto the platform.
- Prevented 37 million products being listed that breached our policies and removed an additional 133,000 individual products after listing.
- Deactivated the accounts of more than 1 million sellers and removed their products due to policy violations.
- Removed e-commerce features from more than 500,000 creators due to policy violations.
Seller accounts are assessed on a variety of factors, including compliance with product eligibility requirements, customer service, and order fulfillment.
Protecting brand and IP:
In addition to proactive strategies, we also take steps when we are made aware of possible breaches of our policies. We also have several reporting channels to combat intellectual property (IP) infringements.
Our dedicated report platform, the Intellectual Property Protection Center (IPPC), provides a streamlined and user-friendly mechanism to report any potential IP infringement. Once we receive a report, we will review the claim and take action and remove any infringing content to protect the rights of intellectual property holders. Rights holders can also utilize the built-in tools within the Seller Center to raise any observed instances of potential infringement on our platform.
Active Collaboration
TikTok Shop collaborates closely with governmental bodies and industry organizations worldwide to address emerging challenges and continually enhance its operational frameworks. Notably, in Southeast Asia, we have strengthened partnerships with key intellectual property offices, including those of Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Furthermore, we actively participate in global conferences and meetings with intellectual property organizations such as the International Trademark Association, Union des Fabricants, Japanese Trade Office, and REACT. Through proactive communication with law enforcement agencies across regions, we can swiftly address and mitigate instances of intellectual property rights infringement, underscoring our commitment to fostering a safe and compliant online environment.
Ensuring that the TikTok community has a trustworthy and safe TikTok Shop experience is critical to our mission to inspire creativity and bring joy. We’re committed to bringing transparency into how we do that. Our development of the TikTok Shop Safety Report is one part of that process. As TikTok Shop grows, so too will this report. We’ll continue to iterate on and evolve what’s included here so that we listen to and address feedback from the TikTok community and other stakeholders.
Click on the following links to view the TikTok Shop Academy and learn about our policies that apply to each market: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, United Kingdom, United States.
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