TikTok said it removed 1.7 million videos posted by Nigerian users in the fourth quarter of 2023.

According to the platform, Nigeria was among the top 50 countries where videos violating its policies emanated from in Q4. In total, 176.5 million videos were removed globally for the period under review.

In its Community Guidelines Enforcement report, the company said the top 50 markets which violated its policies accounted for approximately 90% of all content removals for the quarter.

The removed videos were said to have violated one or more TikTok’s policies bordering on  integrity and authenticity, privacy and security, mental and behavioural health, safety, and civility, among others.

In the period under review, TikTok said it removed a total of 169 million accounts discovered to be spam or fake.

“From October 7 through to the end of 2023, we removed more than 169 million fake accounts globally, and we have removed about 1.2 million bot comments on content tagged with hashtags related to the Israel-Hamas war.”

“We remain vigilant in our efforts to detect external threats and safeguard the platform from fake accounts and engagement. These threats persistently probe and attack our systems, leading to occasional fluctuations in the reported metrics within these areas.

“Despite this, we are steadfast in our commitment to promptly identify and remove any accounts, content, or activities that seek to artificially boost popularity on our platform. During the fourth quarter of 2023, we saw an increase in some of our fake engagement metrics,” it added.

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The company said it also removed a total of 1.03 billion likes from videos. Other actions taken by the social media platform included the removal of 720 million fake followers and 4.9 billion fake follow requests. According to TikTok, the removed likes, followers, and follow requests were discovered to have come through ‘automated or inauthentic mechanisms’.

During the fourth quarter of 2023, TikTok said there was an increase in the volume of ads removed for violating its advertising policies and a decrease in the volume of ads removed due to account-level actions. The report shows that a total of 1.5 million ads were removed in Q4 2023 for violating its ads policies, an increase from 1.3 million recorded in Q3.

“We are continually reviewing and strengthening our systems to identify new patterns and quickly and accurately remove ads that violate our policies. By upholding strict policies, leveraging advanced detection mechanisms, and continuously improving our systems, we strive to foster an advertising experience that is trustworthy, enjoyable, and aligned with the values of our vibrant TikTok community,” the company added.

Despite the removals, TikTok remains one of the most-used social media platforms in the world even as its user-generated revenue continues to soar. According to a recent report from  TikTok has generated $3.8 billion in consumer spending from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in 2023 to bring its total revenue to $10 billion.

MTN Group says it is in talks with the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to increase tariffs due to foreign exchange (FX) impact.

Ralph Mupita, MTN Group’s chief executive officer, spoke during an interview with Bloomberg on Monday.

“We obviously are engaged with the authorities and regulators to get some tariff increases for both voice and data, so that we can actually absorb some of the inflation-related and FX impacts that are in our operating costs, particularly the network operating costs,” he said.

Mupita made this known while speaking on three broad areas the company is working on to limit the impact of the currency devaluation.

Aside from speaking with the regulator, he said part of the solution in tackling FX impact could be through borrowings, renegotiating with IHS Towers, a telecommunications infrastructure provider, and reducing expenditure.

“There are not too many kinds of derivative instruments that we can use against the FX impacts that we have seen, but there are three broad areas that we are working on, in terms of limiting the impact of currency devaluation,” he said.

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“The first is to look at borrowings and that would have taken particularly the kind of letters of credit that would have been used to procure capex, so looking at reducing the outstanding balances there.

“The other is we are in conversations with IHS, in particular around some of our top contracts. We have sat down and we are looking at aspects that we can renegotiate to lessen the impact.

“And the third is actually to reduce expenditure. Nigeria is a big part of our expense efficiency program. We were looking to take out 7 to 8 billion rand of expenses out of construction on a sustained ongoing basis. So those are some of the initiatives that we are taking.

Mupita said there was almost a 97 percent decline in the value of the naira, which reduced earnings from the Nigerian market.

“The big impact on our results was that we had significant naira devaluation, the naira at the midpoint of the year was around 462. We ended the year at 907, almost 97% devaluation of the naira,” Mupita said.

“When we consolidate at the group level, obviously, the Nigeria earnings would have been reduced. But, there was a second headwind, which was that there were foreign exchange losses that came through.

“So when we report underlying earnings, headline earnings of 1203, almost 500 of that was a loss coming out of Nigeria. Quite a significant impact on the reported results, but the underlying momentum that we saw in the business actually was pretty resilient.”

He said naira devaluation had the most significant impact on MTN group results.

Nigeria’s biggest telecom operator, MTN Nigeria recorded a drop in the number of active subscribers on its network following the enforcement of directives banning SIMs not linked with NIN.

According to the latest industry data released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the company’s total active subscriptions, which stood at 87 million in December 2023, plunged to 79.7 million in January.

Recall that MTN recently disclosed that it had disconnected 4.2 million lines following the NCC’s directive on NIN-SIM linkage.

According to the company, since December 2023 when NCC issued an industry-wide directive requiring full barring of subscriber lines not linked to their NIN, it had subjected a total of 19 million lines to verification.

Out of these, it said 4.3 million have been verified and 4.2 million disconnected as of 28 February 2024.

Meanwhile, Airtel and Globacom recorded marginal gains in their subscription database for the month despite the ongoing disconnection exercise.

Airtel, which recently overtook Globacom as the second-largest MNO, gained 767,887 subscriptions. This pushed up its database to 62.6 million in January from 61.8 million in December last year.

Globacom also recorded an increase in its subscriptions as its database grew by 321,869 to 61.9 million from 61.6 million in December.

However, the fourth mobile operator, 9mobile, recorded a decline for the month. The company’s subscriptions declined by 135,788 to 13.7 million in January this year.

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According to the data, active subscriptions across the four mobile networks of MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile stood at 224.4 million as of December 2023, but declined to 218 million in January, 2024.

With the decline in actively connected lines recorded by the operators, the country’s teledensity, which measures the number of active telephone connections per 100 inhabitants living within an area, also declined to 100.75 in January 2024 from 103.66 per cent recorded in December last year.

According to a directive issued by the NCC in December last year, all telecommunications operators in Nigeria, including MTN, Airtel, and Globacom, among others are to implement full network barring on all phone lines for which the subscribers have not submitted their national identification numbers (NINs) by February 28, 2024.

In addition, those who had submitted their NINs but have not been verified are also to be fully barred.

On NINs that have been submitted but not verified, such lines are to be barred on or before 29 March 2024, where five or more lines are linked to an unverified NIN.

Similarly, where less than five lines are linked to an unverified NIN, such lines are to be barred on or before 15 April 2024.