TikTok Removed Over 7 Million Accounts of Suspected Underaged Users

TikTok removed a whopping 7 million accounts of suspected underaged users in only the first three months of the year. The information was released in a transparency report from the platform. The accounts were believed to belong to a person under the age of 13. TikTok has a separate version for users under 12 that have additional safety protections in place.

The additional safety measures for young children were put into place after TikTok was charged a $5.7 million fine in 2019 to “settle with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that it collected personal information from children” reports The Hill. “At the time, the fine from the app, then called Musical.ly, was the largest penalty ever obtained by the commission in a children’s privacy case.”

The 7 million accounts were among a total of 11 million accounts removed by TikTok in the first three months of the year. The remaining 4 million allegedly violated its community guidelines, according to the transparency report.

The report also mentions it prevented over 71 million accounts from being created through automated means and removed more than 12 million videos posted by spam accounts and that 61 million videos were removed globally.

The United States was the country with the largest volume of removed videos with over 8.5 million taken down thus far this year. Rounding out the top four countries with the largest number of removed videos were Pakistan, Brazil, Russia and Indonesia.