TikTok says over 3 million Israeli, Palestinian videos removed since October 7

Social media platform TikTok has removed over 3.1 million videos made in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza and suspended another 140,000 livestreams, an Israel-based spokesperson for the video-sharing app says.

Among the material taken off the platform was “content promoting Hamas, hate speech, violent extremism and misinformation,” the spokesperson says in a statement.

The 3.1 million videos are just a small portion of the nearly 78.3 million videos it says were removed globally for all community guideline violations in the same period, from October 7 to March 31.

Sunday’s statement says TikTok, owned by Chinese firm ByteDance, fine-tuned automated content moderation technology following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, resulting in “an immediate 234% increase in the violative comments removed in Israel and Palestine by this technology.”

It also claims a 13% boost in moderator accuracy in North America thanks to updated training on antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The platform has been hounded by allegations that it allows antisemitic and anti-Israel content or even fosters anti-Jewish attitudes in its users. In November, a survey suggested that for every 30 minutes that someone watches videos on the platform, they became 17% more antisemitic.

Among the videos removed was one by relatives of the hostage Bibas family calling for their release, which a cousin said was taken down last month. The company reportedly blamed a technical fault.

In January, the company’s top lobbyist in Israel resigned in protest of the company’s alleged anti-Israel bias.