Over 3.6 million videos were removed in Nigeria on Tiktok in the first quarter of 2025 because they violated community guidelines, Business Post has learned from the platform’s Q1 2025 Community Guidelines Enforcement Report.
In a report released by the popular social media platform, it was also disclosed that in March 2025, about 129 accounts in West Africa tied to covert operations were removed to protect users.
These actions were taken by the Chinese app in a demonstration of its ongoing commitment to user safety.
It was stated that the harmful visuals deleted in Nigeria between January and March 2025 were 50 per cent higher than the videos yanked off between October and December 2024.
TikTok said the latest removals report represents a small fraction of the total number of videos posted by the Nigerian community quarterly; highlighting that the platform has more positive and empowering content.
With millions of positive, educational and entertaining videos uploaded on TikTok every day, TikTok is continually strengthening its ability to identify and remove content that goes against its Community Guidelines.
TikTok LIVE
While TikTok LIVE enables creators and viewers to connect, create and build communities together, in real-time, the platform has intensified its LIVE Monetization Guidelines, making it clearer how some content is not eligible for monetization.
LIVE content enforcement also remained a top priority. In the first quarter of 2025, TikTok banned 42,196 LIVE rooms and interrupted 48,156 streams in Nigeria that were found to violate the platform’s community guidelines.
A global system for localised protection
Globally, more than 211 million videos were removed in Q1 2025, up from 153 million in the previous quarter, with over 184 million removed through automation. The platform’s global proactive detection rate reached 99 per cent, demonstrating continued improvements in identifying and removing harmful content quickly and effectively.
Despite these high-volume interventions, harmful content still represents a very small portion of what users post. Globally, less than 1 per cent of content uploaded to TikTok is found to violate its community guidelines, a testament to its continued prioritisation of proactive safeguards.
Bringing resources to Nigeria’s community, together
In June, TikTok Africa hosted its “My Kind of TikTok Digital Well-being Summit” bringing together experts, NGOs, creators, media and industry leaders from across Sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, to collectively explore, tackle, and improve the state of digital wellbeing both on and beyond the platform.
Part of a suite of announcements made at the Summit and building on a successful pilot in Europe, TikTok is expanding in-app helpline resources to Nigeria, in partnership with Cece Yara, a child-centered non-profit organisation prioritising youth safety and support. This means that in the coming weeks, young users in Nigeria will have access to local helplines in-app that provide expert support when reporting content related to suicide, self-harm, hate, and harassment.
Collaborating with experts, TikTok has also announced Nigeria’s Dr Olawale Ogunlana (Doctor Wales) as a TikTok Digital Well-being ambassador, part of a diverse group of verified healthcare professionals from the WHO Fides Network.
Alongside these efforts and commitment to safety, TikTok encourages community participation through user reporting and education. As part of its ongoing #SaferTogether campaign, the platform advocates for a more collaborative approach to creating a respectful online environment.