Met Police requests to remove UK drill from TikTok have risen 366 per cent since 2020

nme.com:

TikTok have reportedly increased 366 per cent since 2020.The statistics were first accessed through new data obtained by DJ Mag via a Freedom of Information request and saw the impact that the Met had over online content containing drill music.According to the figures, 64 per cent of TikTok content removal referrals from London’s Metropolitan Police were related to UK drill music during the 2022/23 financial year.

It also reports that 89 per cent of Met Police content removal referrals on TikTok were related to UK drill in the year prior, and 100 per cent during the year preceding that.Removal requests on the platform related to the genre have increased 366 per cent over the last three years.This is due to the lyrical content of many songs in the genre, which have been accused of inciting violence, street crime or drug usage.

The crackdown on UK drill also follows the report earlier this summer, which confirmed that music videos from UK drill artists can now be used as evidence in court.This came after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced in June that music videos from the genre can be submitted as “admissible evidence for a jury to consider” if they can link gang-affiliated suspects to crimes.Despite this, however, the Met have continued to assert that investigators do not target any specific genres in their work, and instead seek out threats of violence and other potential criminal activity.“The Met works closely with social media platforms to identify content we believe could provoke or cause violence,” said a spokesperson for the Met (via DJ Mag). “Following our referral, the social media platforms make their own decision regarding removal of content.”The impact of the censorship and removal requests have.