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Rena Murshud

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On July 5, 2023, the social network TikTok held its first online media event, to which media workers were invited. At an online event (webinar) held via Zoom, the users were introduced to the TikTok social network in terms of security and convenience, Azernews reports.

The webinar was hosted by Kristina Eremeeva, Head of Communications for Eastern Europe and Central Asia of the social network TikTok.

"TikTok inspires people to be creative, and people can get positive emotions from it and learn a lot of new things," said Kristina Eremeeva.

At the event, Eremeeva spoke about the directions in all aspects of human security. Also briefed on TikTok's policies and tools to help ensure a safe and friendly experience for our community, including our underage users.

Kristina spoke about BookTok, which has become a real cultural phenomenon around the world with 150 billion views.
"Azerbaijan also launched the Kitabfest project along with the national book fair. This project has already received more than 11 million views," Eremeyeva added.

According to her, TikTok's approach to content moderation is built around four pillars:
1. Removal from the platform of content that violates its rules.
2. Age restriction so that adult content can only be viewed by adult users (18 years of age or older).
3. Maintain content acceptance standards for the recommendation feed.
4. Providing the community with information, useful tools and resources.

Besides, TikTok regularly releases information about removed videos and accounts to ensure transparency and accountability to its community. This information is disclosed quarterly in the Community Guidelines Enforcement Reports, which provide information on the scope and nature of the content removed from the platform. According to the latest Community Guidelines Enforcement Report, in Q1 2023:
• 91,003,510 videos have been removed worldwide for violating the Community Guidelines.
• 96.7% of removed videos were proactively removed. Proactive removal means identifying and removing a video before it is reported.
• 89.9% of videos were removed within 24 hours of posting.
For the same period of time in Azerbaijan:
• A total of 390,223 videos were removed due to violations of the Community Guidelines.
• 95.2% of the total videos removed were proactively removed by the platform.
• 80.1% of videos in Azerbaijan were removed within the first 24 hours of posting.

Talking about the bans on TikTok, Christina added that, TikTok does not allow content that shows nudity, pornography, or sexually explicit content.

"We monitor content that may be offensive or culturally inappropriate in certain regions, or may not be SUITABLE for users of all ages."

TikTok is prohibited from posting instructions to artificially increase the number of views, "likes", subscribers, newsletters or comments; sell or buy views, likes, subscribers, shares or comments; you can not advertise services for artificial traffic generation and manage multiple TikTok accounts for the purpose of spreading commercial spam; create malware or modify code to artificially increase views, likes, subscribers, shares or comments.

She also touched on the safety of minors. "TikTоka users are prohibited from posting, uploading, streaming, or transmitting to other users content that has sexual innuendo in relation to minors."

While TikTok makes significant efforts to ensure the digital well-being of young users, the role of parents in keeping teens safe is just as important. For starters, TikTok has a 12+ rating on the app stores, and any parent can use the built-in parental controls available on a smartphone to prevent downloading apps that are inappropriate for the user's age.

TikTok also encourages all parents of teens to use the dedicated Family Settings parental control feature. This feature allows parents to customize how their teens use TikTok.

At the end of the webinar, Christina thanked everyone for their participation and wished everyone good luck.

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Rena Murshud is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @RenaTagiyeva

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