Electrical tape

Since electrical tape is an insulator it should have no effect other than perhaps making your contacts harder to achieve.

What do you mean making my contacts harder to achieve? When I plug the fan or tv in, it works fine. I'm just concerned if it the tape inside the socket might spark and damage anything.

It would only 'spark' if you think the tape has residual bits of wire stuck to it which could cause a short circuit. But in that case it would blow a fuse or trigger a cut out. So, if the fan works and there was no cut out, I wouldn't worry about it..

fresco has this right.

Kev, Blat and Fres have that right

I'm wondering why the tape is there in the first place. Could the socket some how be defective and the tape was intended to prevent it's being used? Really, how would electrical tape get there in the first place?

I'm going to speculate that the tape was there to quasibaby proof the socket (completely covering the socket) but the tape was improperly/incompletely removed when the baby proofing wasn't needed.