Before India Banning TikTok, The Company Removed 3.7 Crore Videos From Its Platform

TikTok was the most popular Chinese app before the Indian government banned Chinese apps. TikTok’s Indian userbase was at number 1 in almost every category of the app in terms of active users to downloads and revenue. It is now revealed that there was another category in which Indian users were at the top and that is the videos removed from the app. 3.7 crore videos were removed from India by the Chinese company. The second place behind India in the US, where 98 million videos were removed. However, the number of these deleted videos is less than 1 percent of the total number of all videos uploaded to this app. TikTok had around 200 million users in the country before its ban was imposed in India, which was almost double its US market. Also Read – US to Ban TikTok, WeChat Downloads From September 20 Amid Security Concerns

According to the report, 3.7 crore videos were removed in India by TikTok. In any other country, this number is four times more than the videos removed from TikTok. There were 37 lakh videos removed in Pakistan and this country held the third position. In the case of video deletion, close to 46 lakh videos were removed from the app in the US. At number four, there were seven UK videos with two million videos and Russia with 1.3 million videos at fifth. Also Read – Oracle Wins TikTok Bid in The US, Beats Microsoft in The Race to Acquire Byte Dance

In the recent report, TikTok said that it had pulled out a total of 3,76,82,924 videos from India in the first half of 2020. Those videos were part of 10,45,43,719 videos that were removed from the globally removed platform for violating its Community Guidelines and Terms of Service. The company said – Also Read – TikTok halts talk with UK on opening its HQ in London

“Of those videos, we found 96.46 percent of the videos and deleted them before they notified us, and 90.32 percent were deleted before any views were received.”

As reported by ZDNet, 96.3 percent of the videos were identified and removed before users reported them, while 90.3 percent were subsequently removed. A maximum of 30.9 percent of the videos was removed due to nudity and sexual activity while 22.3 percent were removed for violating minor security and 19.6 percent for illegal activities. TikTok has stated that it had received legal requests from governments and law enforcement agencies as well as IP rights holders to ban or remove certain content.

In addition to providing data to implement its guidelines, TikTok said that it had offered its fact-checking programs in India and many other markets including Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, the UK, and the US. The platform launched with misinformation report functionality COVID-19 sub-category allows users in India to flag misleading content. It also added public service announcements (PSAs) through various hashtags. TikTok has also partnered with UNICEF India, UNESCO, UN Women, UNDP India, Central Square Foundation, and the Indian Psychiatric Society in the country.