Popular social media platform TikTok is cutting off hundreds of workers from its global workforce. This includes a large number of staff in Malaysia as it transitions towards heavily using AI in content moderation.
According to two anonymous sources, most of the dismissed employees had been involved in the firm’s content moderation operations, and were informed of their dismissal by email late on Wednesday.
ByteDance’s TikTok confirmed the layoffs, adding that several hundred employees were expected to be affected worldwide as part of a wider plan to improve its moderation operations.
TikTok employs a mix of automated detection and human moderators to review content posted on its site.
According to the company website, ByteDance has over 110,000 employees in over 200 cities globally,
TikTok is also planning more retrenchments in November as it looks to consolidate some of its regional operations, one of the sources revealed.
The company hopes to invest $2 billion globally in trust and safety this year, with promises that it will continue to improve efficiency, especially as 80% of guidelines-violating content have now been removed by automated technologies, according to the spokesperson.
These job cuts are happening as global technology firms face greater regulatory pressure in Malaysia, where the government has asked social media operators to apply for an operating license by January as part of an effort to combat cyber offences.
This was as Malaysia has earlier this year, reported a sharp increase in harmful social media content. Due to this, it urged firms, including TikTok, to ramp up the monitoring on their platforms.
