China social media company TikTok removed 48,739 accounts suspected to belong to users under the age of 13 in the quarter to March 2026, marking a 47.98 percent drop compared to the preceding quarter’s 93,704-signalling the gains of previous purges on child users.
Children aged 13 and over are allowed to use the TikTok platform, which is highly popular with teenagers.
‘TikTok removed 48,739 accounts suspected to belong to users under the age of 13, a violation of its Community Guidelines, highlighting the platform’s commitment to protecting younger users online,’ the platform said.
The social media company disclosed that overall, it removed 884,591 videos in Kenya for violating its community guidelines.
This is a jump from the previous quarter to December, when 820,552 videos from the country were taken down, pointing to an increasing generation of content from Kenya that does not meet its safety rules and a heavy reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) moderation tools to police content.
TikTok’s Community Guidelines ban content that promotes violence, criminal activity, hate speech, harassment, or abuse. Users are not allowed to post material that encourages violence.
‘In the first quarter of 2026, TikTok removed 884,591 videos for violating its Community Guidelines in Kenya. 99.7 percent of these videos were proactively removed before anyone reported them, while 96.3 percent were taken down within 24 hours of posting,’ said TikTok.
‘These figures underscore TikTok’s continued investment in advanced detection systems and rapid response mechanisms designed to limit the spread of harmful content.’
Social media companies, including Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, are turning to AI-powered content moderation to detect, flag, and remove harmful content, such as graphic violence and hate speech.
These systems utilise machine learning and natural language processing to handle vast volumes of data, reducing the burden on human teams. While AI accelerates the process, human moderators are mostly still used for final, nuanced, or borderline decisions.
‘Automated removals, including those by AI, now make up more than 96 percent of total removals,’ the social media platform said.
In Kenya, TikTok interrupted 103,847 LIVE rooms for violation of guidelines in the quarter to March 2026.
The platform recorded a proactive removal rate of 99.7 percent in Kenya in the three months to March 2026. Proactive removal means identifying and removing a video before it’s reported, which was significantly high, aided by the use of AI.
TikTok removed 96.3 percent of the harmful videos within 24 hours of posting on the platform.
‘In Quarter 1 of 2026, TikTok removed 14,261 videos under our policy for edited media and AI-generated content (AIGC),’ the firm added.
TikTok requires creators to label realistic AIGC. The site forbids content related to human trafficking, sexual exploitation, or abuse of adults or children.
While TikTok welcomes political conversations, remarks that create or pose a substantial danger of harm are removed.
Harassment, bullying, and doxing are also prohibited.
To safeguard users’ mental health, content that depicts suicide, self-harm, risky stunts, or eating disorders is prohibited.
Additionally, TikTok prohibits graphic violence, animal abuse, and explicit sexual content. It also eliminates false information, especially about elections, public health, and civic processes, and mandates that AI-generated or significantly modified media be disclosed.