Tiktok will start deleting violating Cameroon contents

If a Tiktok user doesn’t see his or her contents on their official account after uploading, then it must been taken down by Tiktok.

Officials from Tiktok West and Central Africa promised the National Communication Council of Cameroon that the platform will look into contents that violates rules ,calls for violence, fake news among others.

In June 2024, both parties agreed on an MoU and promised to pen the paper when the legal team of Tiktok must have gone through.

according to the President of the National Communication Council, Joe Chebonkeng, these measures are critical for Cameroon as the country prepares for upcoming elections in 2025.

Tiktok delegation promised to look into such violations, saying contents sorted out by the NCC would be their priority to scrutinise.

Free speech in the mud?

In the wake of the Anglophone crisis that started in 2016 and quickly transformed into an armed conflict, Facebook was invited in Cameroon and since then there were massive monitoring of accounts and deletions of some. Facebook users complained that the company was being forced to do so by the Cameroon government, hence siding with dictatorship.

Cameroon News Agency for example was warned on several occasions and their official page was on red alert for deletion. Many contents on the conflict were deleted by Facebook while others were unnecessarily flagged.

Cameroonians are worried, would Tiktok do the same job that Facebook did?

It should however be noted that not all Facebook and Tiktok users do follow policies hence they have to be checked, but these measures should not in anyway undermine freedom of speech and expression. There are fears that those who promote political discourses would be on spyglass.