Amidst a chaotic week at TikTok, the app took some time to acknowledge its growing community of sellers — and the safety features that support them. TikTok Shop now has more than 500,000 U.S.-based sellers just eight months after its Stateside debut.
The latest TikTok Shop data comes from a “Safety Report” published by the ByteDance-owned app. The report covers the second half of 2023, when TikTok Shop arrived in the U.S. and onboarded more than six million new sellers across the globe. The global TikTok Shop base now includes more than 15 million sellers worldwide, with countries like Indonesia serving as ecommerce hotspots.
TikTok Shop has already delivered strong earnings for some U.S.-based creators, but other users have complained about the low quality of some of the items sold on the shopping hub. In the TikTok Shop Safety Report, the app noted the $400 million effort it has made to keep its platform secure.
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During the second half of 2023, TikTok declined two million seller account registrations and nixed 37 million product listings as part of its attempt to root out fraudulent vendors. During the same period, more than one million seller accounts were deactivated due to policy violations, and 500,000 creators had their ecommerce privileges revoked for the same reason.
TikTok also handled 68,000 takedown notices from brand owners during the second half of the year. “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,” said Mary Hubbard, the Head of TikTok Shop Americas for Governance & Experience, in a statement.
Despite TikTok’s sizable investment in protections for its social sellers, its security measures did not convince the United States Congress to shelve the “divest-or-ban” bill President Biden signed into law last week. Whoever ends up owning TikTok at the end of 2024 will be dealing with a few headaches, but they’ll also be able to celebrate a growing ecommerce empire that spans from Asia to America.
