Russia became the fourth-largest market in terms of content removed due to violations of TikTok community guidelines. In the first quarter of this year, more than 3.7 million videos posted by Russian users were removed. This was stated to Vedomosti by a representative of the social network in Russia, commenting on the proposal of the Safe Internet League to slow down the traffic of the social network in the country due to the lack of moderation of prohibited content.
“82% of these videos were removed before even one person watched them, 91% were removed before user complaints were received, and 93% were removed within 24 hours of publication. 11,149,514 accounts were deleted for violation of the Community Rules or the user agreement, of which 7,263,952 accounts were deleted because they could belong to persons under the age of 13, ”explained the representative of the social network.
TikTok uses a combination of machine and human moderation to enforce community guidelines. “We apply different measures to those who violate the rules, including removing content and blocking accounts. We also have teams of Russian-speaking moderators and special functionality within the application, with which users and organizations can complain about the content, ”the representative explained.
On July 1, TASS reported that the Safe Internet League asked Roskomnadzor to check TikTok for materials about suicides, drug propaganda and insults to the feelings of believers. The head of the organization, Yekaterina Mizulina, the daughter of Senator Elena Mizulina, told the agency that the Safe Internet League appealed to Roskomnadzor in connection with the distribution of “a large number of prohibited content” on the TikTok platform. Mizulina stated that “there is practically no moderation of such content on this social network.” In the document, the regulator calls for the use of measures to comply with the law on the so-called self-censorship of social networks on this platform “to the point of slowing down its traffic.”
The day before, within the framework of a direct line, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Russian authorities were not going to block foreign social networks. However, the platforms themselves ignore the requirements of regulators to remove prohibited content, so the latter retain the right to use technical measures, including slowing down traffic in Russia.
Roskomnadzor in March partially slowed down the work of Twitter due to non-compliance with the requirements of the regulator. In addition, by the beginning of July, according to administrative protocols filed by the department with the court, the social network is obliged to pay in the amount of almost 30 million rubles. A number of foreign social networks, including TikTok, Facebook and others, also have to pay fines in the amount of tens of millions of rubles.
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