A recent analysis by the German magazine Spiegel, based on data provided by major online platforms to the European Union, has revealed that TikTok has removed or restricted the most content in the EU, with a total of 256 million items taken down or limited from October to December 2024.
According to the Spiegel’s report, 43% of the removed or restricted content was classified as hate speech or incitement to hatred. In contrast, X, the former Twitter, removed or restricted content mostly due to pornography and sexual content, with around 40% of the total 200,000 items taken down or limited being related to these issues.
YouTube, on the other hand, mainly dealt with cases of “fraud and manipulation”, such as disinformation, with 46.7% of the total 25.3 million cases falling into this category, according to the Spiegel.
The Digital Services Act (DSA) of the EU requires platform operators to report every decision to remove or restrict content to the European Commission and the content creator. A total of 514 million posts and comments were reported by TikTok, X, YouTube, LinkedIn and the Meta-owned services Instagram and Facebook from October to December 2024.
Platforms often provide vague reasons for removal, such as a “violation of the platform’s rules”, as the Spiegel reported. For example, Facebook did so in 92% of all cases, despite the DSA requiring clear and understandable explanations.
“Abstract justifications do not help users”said Julian Jaursch of the think tank Interface to the Spiegel. “The user should be able to follow the decision and, if necessary, appeal it. Transparency should not be an end in itself, but should help authorities and people.”
The platforms are not required to disclose the total number of posts published by their users, making the provided data only partially comparable. It is possible that TikTok’s high rate of content removal does not necessarily mean it has more hate speech, but rather that it is more strict in its moderation or has a higher volume of posts.