TikTok takes down nearly 400,000 videos in Kenya

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TikTok is deleting more videos in Kenya for violating community guidelines, as the company looks to avoid government scrutiny over content moderation for sexually explicit content.

TikTok pulled down 360,000 videos in Kenya in the three months to June, according to its newly published Q2 enforcement report. It took down 296,000 videos in all of 2023 in Kenya. The videos removed in the three-month period accounted for 0.3% of videos uploaded in Kenya in that quarter.

The platform was compelled by Kenya’s government in April to share quarterly compliance reports because it faced a petition that threatened to see it banned in the country.

The proliferation of sexual content in particular on TikTok in Kenya fueled the push for stricter moderation from regulators concerned about Only Fans-style content. Videos featuring ethnic incitement and violence are also often pulled down for violating guidelines.

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TikTok’s enforcement report further disclosed that the platform banned nearly 60,000 accounts in Kenya for violating various community guidelines, with many of them suspected to belong to users below the age of 13. It said 99.1% of the videos pulled down in April, May and June in Kenya were removed before users reported them.

The platform credited its investments in technology for enabling greater automated detection of harmful content, which it uses alongside human moderators. The Bytedance-owned platform said it removed over 178 million videos globally in June alone, out of which 144 million were removed through automation.

In August TikTok set up an advisory council with experts drawn from across the continent to help inform its policies and improve its content moderation.

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The number of videos pulled down last year was revealed by the platform’s Head of Government Relations director Fortune Sibanda when he appeared before Kenya’s Parliament earlier this year at the height of the petition to ban TikTok in Kenya. The failed petition sought to have the platform shut down over the dissemination of explicit, harmful and violent content in the country.

The country’s technology ministry, however, told Parliament that it preferred to enhance regulation of the platform as opposed to a ban.