TikTok said it removed more than 300,000 videos in the first three months of 2021 for spreading 'violent extremism'

• TikTok said it removed more than 300,000 videos for violating its policy on "violent extremism" from January through March.
• The figure represents about half a percent of the 61 million videos it removed from the app in total.
• The numbers come in TikTok's first transparency report of the year.

TikTok announced Wednesday that it removed more than 300,000 videos for violating its policy on "violent extremism" in the first three months of 2021.

In total, the company announced it removed more than 61 million videos for various violations of its community guidelines in the first three months of this year.

The numbers come from its first transparency report of 2021, which covers content posted to the platform during the first quarter of the year, from January 1 through March 31. The company began releasing transparency reports in 2019, though previous reports were released bi-annually rather than quarterly.

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Of these "violent" videos, 82.1% were removed before users reported them to the company, and 87.1% of them were removed within 24 hours of being posted on TikTok, the company said Wednesday.

In the company's previous transparency report, which covered videos posted in the second half of 2020, it said 0.3% of videos it removed for community guidelines violations were because of "violent extremism," meaning the videos removed in the first quarter of this year represent a larger percentage of the total videos removed by the company.

"We believe this increase in removals is due to our guidelines now describing in greater detail what's considered a violent threat and/or incitement to violence in terms of the content and behavior we prohibit," TikTok said in the report.

According to the TikTok community guidelines, the company prohibits videos that "threaten or incite violence" or videos that "promote dangerous individuals or organizations."

Videos prohibited under this designation include those that feature instructions on how to make weapons, ones that encourage others "to bring weapons to a location with the intent to intimidate," and other videos that encourage people to commit violence against an individual or a group of people, according to the guidelines.