TikTok has shared its latest EU content enforcement and usage numbers, as part of its DSA disclosure reporting, which provides some interesting notes on moderation, user growth, and more within the region
The latest report covers the period between July and December 2024, and is the platform’s fourth DSA report. Under the EU Digital Services Act, large online platforms need to share regular data on their performance in these key areas.
And while a lot of the info is in line with previous trends, there are some points of note.
First off, TikTok reports that it removed almost 21.2 million pieces of content in the period for Community Guidelines violations, along with a further 1.5 million for violations of its ad policies.
The Community Guidelines violations are in line with the platform’s previous DSA reports, but its ad removals have jumped significantly since its last update (3.4x overall).
Why?
TikTok saw a 4x increase in removals due to “Misleading and False Content” in the period, and a similar increase in removals for “Adult and Sexual Content”.
There was also a 6x increase in removals for “IP Infringement”, so clearly, TikTok’s push into in-stream shopping has seen it up its enforcement on this front.
But the biggest increase of them all? A 19x jump in removals within the “Politics and Religion and Culture” category.
Considering the various major elections within the period, that’s not a huge surprise, but it is interesting to see how some politically-motivated groups seemingly sought to use TikTok to broaden their messaging. Maybe that worked to some degree, but the removal numbers show that TikTok’s checking processes also caught out a lot of misleading ads as well.
That could also point to more censorship of “culture” based activity, but there’s no specific breakdown of the removals in the report.
In terms of content moderation, TikTok reports having 5,807 people dedicated to content moderation of content in the EU as of the end of December 2024.
Which is a decline from its previous reports.
In its last update, published in October last year, TikTok reported having 6,354 EU moderators, so it’s seemingly reduced that by 547 staff over the last six months.
That’s unlikely to make EU regulators too happy, though TikTok did post a slight increase in moderation staff last report (+67).
Maybe, then, this is just a correction in staffing, though it’s a significant correction if that’s the case, which more likely indicates that it’s putting more reliance on its AI systems to detect and highlight potential issues.
Indeed, TikTok also notes that:
“In the second half of 2024, the accuracy rate for our automated moderation technologies was 99.1%. This builds upon the high accuracy we achieved in the first half of the year, even as moderation volumes increased, reflecting our continued investment in improving precision and reducing incorrect removals.”
As such, it seems that TikTok is reducing its reliance on human moderators over time, which is another element to watch.
Finally, in terms of users, TikTok reports having 159.1 million monthly active users in Europe in the period.
That’s an increase of around 9 million on its last report, which shows that TikTok is steadily growing in the region, and building its broader influence.
Which is good news, as its future in the U.S. still hangs in the balance. The company is also looking to increase its push on TikTok shopping within Europe to capitalize on its popularity.
Germany, France, Italy and Spain remain TikTok’s key EU nations, now with over 20 million users each.
For context, the U.S. currently has around 170 million TikTok users.
These are some interesting notes, which point to TikTok’s increasing efforts to stamp out certain elements, particularly relating to IP violations and misleading products.
Because these could erode confidence in its in-app sales tools, and as such, TikTok needs to ensure that its systems are detecting such, while it’ll also be interesting to see how its removals related to religion and politics shift, or not, over time.
You can check out TikTok’s latest DSA report here.
