A little less than 350,000 were removed from TikTok in the second half of 2020. The videos removed including topics of election misinformation, disinformation and manipulated media.
Transparency report
TikTok recently updated their transparency report. In the report, they pride themselves to make the platform a place everyone can feel safe and feel comfortable making content. They remove accounts or content that go against the Community Guidelines. With the election that took place last year, the guidelines were heavily crossed and enforced.
Resources
Last year TikTok provided users with an in-app election guide to give users authoritative information in hopes to combat misinformation. The information available in the guide come from the National Association of Secretaries of State, The US Election Assistance Commission, The Associated Press and more trusted institutions. TikTok reports the guide was viewed 17,995,580 times.
Precautions
The team of safety, security, policy and operations at TikTok prepared for 65 different scenarios going into election season. Scenarios included premature declarations of victory which improved the efficiency of dealing with content quickly.
Action taken
In the second half of 2020, 347,225 videos got removed for violating the community guidelines surrounding the election. 441,028 videos were blocked from everyone’s For You feed and 1,750,000 were removed during the election season.
TikTok worked with PolitiFact, Lead Stories as well as SciVerify to gauge the accuracy of content posted to the platform. With fact-checkers TikTok also limited the disruption of unsubstantiated content.
Furthermore, in the report, TikTok lists what they learned and what they may improve on. One of their learnings was to quickly redirect hashtags such as #stopthesteal, #patriotparty and #sharpiegate. This process helped fight against QAnon content although TikTok stated “we continually must update our safeguards as content and terminology evolves.” They also covered aspects of their learnings that can be improved like developing their system to prevent repeat offenders from finding a way to post to TikTok.