By Sonny Aragba-Akpore
On Monday September 16, 2024, ByteDance and it’s short video platform, Tik Tok appeared at a crowded court in Washington DC, the United States of America (USA) before a panel of three judges to appeal against a law that is likely to ban the company from doing business in the USA by January 2025, if it does not divest its operations.
Although, this legal tussle is ongoing, Nigerian content creators appear to be the first victims of this long drawn battle between Tik Tok and the American government.
While the content creators wonder what becomes of their trade, Facebook and Instagram are making things more difficult for them.
Tik Tok, Facebook and Instagram may have strong reasons for their actions but not as much as we know.
Meta Group, owners of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp last week deleted over 1,600 users in Nigeria for alleged scamming activities.
The deleted 1,600 Facebook groups are allegedly linked to Yahoo Boys.
This purge, which happened on October 17, 2024 follows the one in July 2024 that saw 7,200 Facebook assets removed. The company also announced that the recent removal of 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria were tied to financial sextortion scams.
On Thursday October 17, 2024, Meta revealed that these groups attempted to organise, recruit, and train new scammers. It said: “Yahoo Boys are banned under Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals policy — one of our strictest policies — which means we remove Yahoo Boys’ accounts engaged in this criminal activity whenever we become aware of them.
“While we’ve been removing violating Yahoo Boys accounts for years, we’re putting new processes in place which will allow us to identify and remove these accounts more quickly.”
In addition to targeting scammers, Meta introduced new safety features aimed at protecting users, particularly teens, from sextortion scams. These measures include blocking suspicious accounts from following teens and making it harder for scammers to view follower lists, which are often used to blackmail victims.
The TikTok face off with the U.S. government in federal court specifically argued a law that could ban the platform in a few short months, saying it is unconstitutional .
But the American Justice Department said it is needed to eliminate a national security risk posed by the popular social media company.
In the more than two-hour appearance before a panel of three judges at a Federal Appeals Court in Washington DC, attorneys for the two sides – and content creators – were pressed on their best arguments for and against the law that forces TikTok and its China-based parent company ByteDance to break ties by mid-January or lose one of their biggest markets in the world.
Andrew Pincus, a veteran attorney representing the two companies, argued in court that the law unfairly targets the company and runs foul of the First Amendment because TikTok Inc. – the U.S. arm of TikTok – is an American entity. After his remarks, another attorney representing content creators who are also challenging the law argued it violates the rights of U.S. speakers and is akin to prohibiting Americans from publishing on foreign-owned media outlets, such as Politico, Al Jazeera or Spotify.
Despite the spirited arguments put forward, Tik Tok is already licking its wounds and in what seems a transferred aggression visited its spleen by deleting over two million accounts of Nigerians mid last week.
This is the second time in the last one year that it will visit its anger on Nigerians.
By last quarter of 2023, no fewer than 1.7 million accounts were deleted.
Figures published in ByteDance’s advertising resources indicate that TikTok had 23.84 million users aged 18 and above in Nigeria in early 2024, according to DataReportal.
ByteDance allows marketers to target TikTok ads to users aged 13 and above via its advertising tools, but these tools only show audience data for users aged 18 and above.
ByteDance’s figures indicate that TikTok ads reached 20.8 per cent of all adults aged 18 and above in Nigeria at the start of 2024.
TikTok’s ad reach in Nigeria was equivalent to 23.1 per cent of the local internet user base at the beginning of the year, regardless of age, according to DataReportal.
In early 2024, 40.9 per cent of TikTok’s ad audience in Nigeria was female, while 59.1 per cent was male. ByteDance’s advertising resources only publish audience gender data for “female” and “male” users.
DataReportal explains that ad audiences often only account for a subset of a platform’s total users, and given that TikTok’s ad tools only publish data for users aged 18 and above, it’s important to remember that trends in TikTok’s ad reach figures may not necessarily match changes in the platform’s overall user base. In reality TikTok’s ad reach in Nigeria was equivalent to 23.1 percent of the local internet user base at the beginning of the year, regardless of age.
The battle in the American courts is especially calculated to upturn a Presidential Executive Order which specifically directs Tik Tok to divest its operations by breaking away from the Chinese appendages.
The measure, signed by President Joe Biden in April, 2024 was the culmination of years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China.
The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to alleged manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.
So what is the offence of Nigerian content creators in all of these?
During the second quarter of 2024, approximately 21.6 million TikTok accounts owned by Nigerians were removed from the platform due to suspicion of being operated by users under the age of 13.
“During the last measured period, around 171 million fake accounts were removed from TikTok” as alleged by the company saying that the deleted accounts allegedly consistently violated Community Guidelines and so stood banned from TikTok.
“If your account has been banned, you’ll receive a banner notification when you next open the app, informing you of this account change,” Tik Tok stated.
Some of the accounts were deleted because they were said to be inactive and were not used to access TikTok for at least 180 days.
“Whether an account is inactive is not publicly visible and duplication of user name is inadmissible.”
“In most instances, we cannot reassign a username. We suggest using a variation of your desired username by adding numbers or underscores, or using an abbreviation.
“If you believe that a username infringes your intellectual property rights, view our Intellectual Property Policy.”
TikTok’s Community Guidelines Enforcement Report provides insight into how the platform maintains safety and integrity. With over 40,000 trust and safety professionals working alongside cutting-edge technology, TikTok enforces strict guidelines and policies to ensure a positive experience for all users.
With a global proactive detection rate of 98.2%, TikTok is more efficient than ever at preventing harmful content from reaching its audience. The platform’s ongoing investment in cutting-edge moderation technology is coupled with its commitment to transparency, ensuring a secure space for its diverse Nigerian and global users.
TikTok’s report is part of its broader mission to inspire creativity and foster a joyful, safe environment for all users.
These actions reflect TikTok’s focus on ensuring user safety by addressing harmful content swiftly. The platform continues to invest in advanced technologies to detect and remove inappropriate material.
Globally, TikTok removed over 178 million videos in June 2024, with 144 million of these removed through automated systems. These improvements have helped reduce the exposure of moderators to harmful content, as well as the speed of detection.
“In its Q2 2024 Community Guidelines Enforcement Report, Tik Tok emphasized its commitment to maintaining a safe and positive environment for Nigerian users. This report provides transparency into the platform’s content moderation efforts, highlighting the videos and accounts removed for violating community guidelines,” according to agency reports.
The 2.1 million videos deleted from Nigeria are less than 1% of all content uploaded in the country.
The social media platform attributed this action to violations of its Community Guidelines. It noted Nigeria’s presence among the top 50 countries for such policy breaches during Q4 of 2023.
Globally, 176.5 million videos were removed during this period, with the top 50 offending markets responsible for about 90% of these removals.
According to the report, the deleted videos violate TikTok’s restrictions pertaining to safety, and civility. Additionally, they violate mental and behavioral health, privacy and security, integrity, and authenticity restrictions, among others.
TikTok claimed that within the period under examination, it had deleted 169 million accounts that had been found to be fraudulent or spam.
Agency reports quoted TikTok Ada’s saying: “From October through to the end of 2023, we removed more than 169 million fake accounts globally. Also, we have removed about 1.2 million bot comments on content tagged with hashtags related to the Israel-Hamas war.”
“However, we remain vigilant in our efforts to detect external threats and safeguard the platform from fake accounts and engagement. These threats persistently probe and attack our systems, leading to occasional fluctuations in the reported metrics within these areas.”
Since its launch, TikTok has become one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, using recommendation algorithms to connect content creators with new audiences.
In April 2020, TikTok surpassed two billion mobile downloads worldwide.
Cloud flare ranked TikTok the most popular website of 2021, surpassing Google. The popularity of TikTok has allowed viral trends in food and music to take off and increase the platform’s cultural impact worldwide.
TikTok has come under scrutiny due to data privacy violations, mental health concerns, misinformation, offensive content, and its role during the Israel–Hamas war.
Countries have fined, banned, or attempted to restrict TikTok to protect children or out of national security concerns over possible user data collection by the Chinese government through ByteDance.
TikTok, started as Douyin in China and Hong Kong as a short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes.It can be accessed with a smart phone app.
ByteDance planned on Douyin expanding overseas. The founder of ByteDance, Zhang Yiming, stated that “China is home to only one-fifth of Internet users globally. If we don’t expand on a global scale, we are bound to lose to peers eyeing the four-fifths. So, going global is a must.”
ByteDance created TikTok as a global version of Douyin. TikTok was launched in the international market in September 2017. On November 9, 2017, ByteDance spent nearly $1 billion to purchase Musical.ly, a startup headquartered in Shanghai with an overseas office in Santa Monica, California. Musical.ly was a social media video platform that allowed users to create short lip-sync and comedy videos, initially released in August 2014. TikTok merged with Musical.ly on August 2, 2018 with existing accounts and data consolidated into one app, keeping the title TikTok.
On January 23, 2018, the TikTok app ranked first among free application downloads on app stores in Thailand and other countries. TikTok has been downloaded more than 130 million times in the United States and has reached two billion downloads worldwide, according to data from mobile research firm Sensor Tower (those numbers exclude Android users in China).
In the United States, celebrities including Jimmy Fallon and Tony Hawk began using the app in 2018. Other celebrities, including Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba, Will Smith, and Justin Bieber joined TikTok as well as many others. In January 2019, TikTok allowed creators to embed merchandise sale links into their videos.
On September 3, 2019, TikTok and the U.S. National Football League (NFL) announced a multi-year partnership. The agreement occurred just two days before the NFL’s 100th season kick-off at Soldier Field, where TikTok hosted activities for fans in honor of the deal. The partnership entails the launch of an official NFL TikTok account, which is to bring about new marketing opportunities such as sponsored videos and hashtag challenges.
In July 2020, TikTok, excluding Douyin, reported close to 800 million monthly active users worldwide after less than four years of existence.
In May 2021, TikTok appointed Shou Zi Chew as their new CEO who assumed the position from interim CEO Vanessa Pappas, following the resignation of Kevin A. Mayer on August 27, 2020. In September 2021, TikTok reported that it had reached one billion users.
In 2021, TikTok earned $4 billion in advertising revenue.
In October 2022, TikTok was reported to be planning an expansion into the e-commerce market in the US, following the launch of TikTok Shop in the United Kingdom. The company posted job listings for staff for a series of order fulfillment centers in the U.S. and is reportedly planning to start the new live shopping business before the end of the year.
Douyin was launched by ByteDance in September 2016, originally under the name A.me, before rebranding to Douyin in December 2016.
Douyin was developed in 200 days and within a year had 100 million users, with more than one billion videos viewed every day.
While TikTok and Douyin share a similar user interface, the platforms operate separately.
Douyin includes an in-video search feature that can search by people’s faces for more videos of them, along with other features such as buying, booking hotels, and making geo-tagged reviews.