A look at moderators' workstation at TikTok's Transparency and Accountability Center in Raffles Quay, Singapore. Ched Rick Gatchalian, ABS-CBN News

SINGAPORE — Of the 1.6 million videos flagged daily for violating TikTok's community guidelines, 85 percent are removed automatically by its AI systems before even reaching the platform's 40,000 trust and safety teams.

At TikTok's Transparency and Accountability Centre (TAC) in Raffles Quay, Singapore, the video-sharing app has a sample of its machine that can detect whether content violates its community guidelines by showing violence, hateful behavior, illegal activities, harassment and bullying and self-harm, among many others.

The social media platform's community guidelines were updated in 2024, as part of efforts to stay relevant in the rapidly changing digital world.

"After consulting dozens of global organizations, we overhauled how our policies are structured, simplified language for clarity, and added more granularity to make our rules easily accessible for creators, researchers, and the broader community," TikTok said.

TikTok said its AI machines have learned to recognize harmful objects and understand facial and body structures.

But the process does not end there, as Tiktok also has several teams who check the detected or reported videos based on the platform's updated Community Guidelines. These moderators were trained to utilize "localized approach" to understand various dialects and cultures as well.

TikTok added that it deleted over a billion comments due to violations in the third quarter of 2024 alone.

The whole moderating process becomes a bit more complex in terms of live videos, the app said in a TAC media visit, citing the need to monitor "real-time" situations. But it said it uses the same AI detection systems and relies on the user reporting feature to quickly track erring content creators.

TikTok removes nearly 4 million videos in PH due to violations

In the Philippines, around 4.5 million videos were removed from July to October 2024 after violating community guidelines. TikTok said 98 percent of these videos were taken down in 24 hours.

HALALAN 2025

TikTok said it was actively participating to help maintain the integrity of the upcoming midterm elections. Its efforts started last January 28 when it signed a partnership agreement with Commission on Elections (Comelec).

Aside from the in-app hub "Election Center" that helps users gain knowledge on election-related content, the platform said it was brewing another initiative.

TikTok launches 'PH Election Center' for May polls

"We are also planning to put together a podcast where people can have access to [verified] elections information," said Peachy Paderna, TikTok Philippines Public Policy Manager.

"We are already in talks with the Legal Network for Truthful Elections or LENTE in developing this podcast. We are very excited to put this out and reach out to more audiences about elections information and really empowering them so that they have the means to go to the poll centers come Elections Day, and have themselves be heard," she explained.

TikTok reminded the public that political ads are banned in general on its platform.