LONDON: TikTok said it has blocked 37 million attempted product listings for its online shop, as it published its latest report into the safety of its ecommerce platform.

The report, which covers July to December 2023, said the social media giant also blocked the registration of two million seller accounts because they did not meet the site’s sign-up requirements.

Since first launching in 2021, the TikTok Shop has now grown to host a network of 15 million sellers around the world, with six million of those joining the platform in the second half of 2023 alone.

In its latest safety report, TikTok said it also removed 133,000 individual products after they were listed on the site, and deactivated the accounts of more than one million sellers, and removed their products, because of policy violations.

In addition, ecommerce features had been removed from more than 500,000 creators, because of rule breaches.

“As we enable thousands of businesses to sell millions of products, the TikTok Shop Safety Report demonstrates our continued investment in creating safer and trustworthy shopping experiences for our community,” Jan Wilk, head of operations for TikTok Shop UK, said.

The social media firm said it spent more than US$400mil in 2023 investing in tools, technology and people to keep its marketplace safe for consumers and businesses.

The growth of TikTok Shop comes despite ongoing uncertainty for the app in the United States, after President Joe Biden signed a Bill into law that gives the platform’s parent company, ByteDance, nine months to sell TikTok’s US business or face a ban in the country.

The move followed years of calls by some US politicians for TikTok to be banned over security concerns around ByteDance’s links to China. A number of governments around the world have already banned the app from government devices.

 - dpa