TikTok Banning Several Accounts To Curb Spread Of Violence, Fear In Myanmar

TikTok says it has “aggressively banned” numerous accounts and devices in Myanmar, adding that it was doing this to curb misinformation and the spread of violent videos on its platform.

It was gathered that Myanmar soldiers posted hundreds of videos to TikTok since the military coup on February 1. The video ranges from traditional pro-government propaganda, to misinformation to confuse the protesters, to threat from soldiers with weapons.

The tech company removed some of the videos earlier this month after reports about the rise in hate speech and threats in the southeast Asian nation. The report added that the short-form video platform admitted it had not moved swiftly enough to stop the spread of the threatening video and other contents liable to cause violence.

There has been continuous protest since the February 1 coup, more than 200 people have been killed in Myanmar.

READ ALSO: Myanmar Protesters Continue Rally Despite Military Threats

“The promotion of hate, violence and misinformation has absolutely no place on TikTok,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “When we identified the rapidly escalating situation in Myanmar, we quickly expanded our dedicated resources and further stepped-up efforts to remove violative content. We aggressively banned numerous accounts and devices that we identified promoting dangerous content at scale.”

The statement added that TikTok “will continue to make significant investment to respond to new threats in order to keep TikTok in Myanmar a safe platform.”

Activists and rights advocates have compared the use of TikTok to spread government propaganda in Myanmar to the way the country’s military used Facebook to stoke violence and hate speech against the country’s Rohingya minority in the early 2010.

In February, Facebook announced the banning of the Tatmadaw (Myanmar Military) and other state-controlled entities from both Facebook and Instagram.