In the second half of 2020, TikTok removed about 347,000 videos for containing misinformation about the US presidential election. The platform also took action on nearly two million accounts "used for automation" around the time of the election.
TikTok Reveals Results of Massive Election Misinformation Takedown
TikTok unveiled its efforts to combat misinformation in its latest Transparency Report. The report, which covers the period between July and December 2020, shows that TikTok removed hundreds of thousands of videos "for election misinformation, disinformation, or manipulated media."
The platform also limited the visibility of "unsubstantiated content" related to the election. This caused over 440,000 videos to be banned from appearing as recommendations in For You feeds. TikTok credits its automated technology for allowing the platform to have such an efficient response to misleading content, stating:
Our teams are supported by automated technology that identifies and flags content for review as well as industry-leading threat intelligence platforms that escalate content emerging across the internet and on our platform.
The report also revealed that TikTok prepared for 65 different election outcomes, including cases that include premature declarations of victory and disputed results. According to TikTok, this helped the platform "respond to emerging content appropriately and in a timely manner." Facebook took a similar approach when preparing for the election, and even considered throttling the flow of content on Election Day.
Just two months before the election, TikTok created an in-app election guide to combat misinformation. The guide clearly paid off, as TikTok noted that it was viewed close to 18 million times. It also added banners that linked to its hub to around seven million election-related videos—these banners were viewed a whopping 37 billion times.
What About Other Types of Misinformation?
Aside from election-related misinformation, TikTok removed 51,000 videos that contained misinformation about COVID-19. Its built-in COVID-19 information hub, which connects users with credible resources about the pandemic, garnered around two billion views as well.
In total, TikTok removed 89 million videos globally for breaking TikTok's Community Guidelines or Terms of Service. This is less than one percent of all videos uploaded to TikTok during this period.
2020 Will Forever Change the Approach to Misinformation
Social platforms are getting better at identifying and removing misleading content. 2020 taught all social networks a valuable lesson regarding the spread of misinformation, especially in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the US presidential election.
Both of these major events have platforms armed for any future instances where misinformation may cause chaos, and we can likely only expect the misinformation crackdown to become even more efficient in the coming years.