Chinese short-form video app TikTok has removed 380,000 clips in the US for violating its hate speech policy so far this year.
As revealed in a blog update, TikTok US head of safety Eric Han explained that the company is working on ways to fight against hatred on its platform, as it has been forced to ban over 1,300 accounts for toxic behaviour and remove more than 64,000 hateful comments.
“To be clear, these numbers don’t reflect a 100% success rate in catching every piece of hateful content or behavior, but they do indicate our commitment to action,” said Han.
First of all, the ByteDance-owned company will evolve its hate policy, to further prohibit any hate filled content. To be clear, TikTok considers hate speech to be “content that intends to or does attack, threaten, incite violence against, or dehumanize an individual or group of individuals on the basis of protected attributes like race, religion, gender, gender identity, national origin, and more.”
Down with hate
The clip app is also committed to disbanding hateful groups, behaviour and speech, as well as increasing its cultural awareness. Next, TikTok will work to improve its transparency within its community, and finally, invest further into teams and partnerships.
It is interesting to see how much hate speech has been exercised by the US on the platform, given its president, Donald Trump is looking to have the app banned in the country. In fact, he has signed an executive order that will force TikTok out in September, Trump then went on to give the ByteDance-owned firm 90 days to sell its US operations.
Currently, there is interest from Microsoft, the tech giant was given 45 days by the president to come to an agreement with TikTok. However, recently, it was reported that software giant Oracle was also considering a deal.
