By Rozanna Latiff
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – China’s ByteDance, the guardian of social media platform TikTok, has laid off greater than 700 employees from its Malaysian unit as the corporate shifts focus in direction of larger use of AI in content material moderation, two sources aware of the matter advised Reuters.
The workers, most of whom had been concerned within the agency’s content material moderation operations, had been knowledgeable of their dismissal by e mail late Wednesday, the sources mentioned, requesting anonymity as they weren’t licensed to talk to media.
In response to Reuters’ queries, TikTok confirmed the layoffs on Friday, however mentioned it was unable to offer a exact determine on the variety of workers affected in Malaysia.
It anticipates that a number of a whole lot might be impacted globally as a part of a wider plan to enhance its moderation operations. TikTok employs a mixture of automated detection and human moderators to evaluate content material posted on the positioning.
Bytedance has over 110,000 workers in additional than 200 cities globally, in accordance with the corporate web site.
The know-how agency can also be planning extra retrenchments subsequent month because it appears to consolidate a few of its regional operations, one of many sources mentioned.
“We’re making these modifications as a part of our ongoing efforts to additional strengthen our world working mannequin for content material moderation,” a TikTok spokesperson mentioned in a press release.
The corporate expects to take a position $2 billion globally in belief and security this 12 months and can proceed to enhance effectivity, with 80% of guideline-violating content material now eliminated by automated applied sciences, the spokesperson mentioned.
The layoffs had been first reported by enterprise portal The Malaysian Reserve on Thursday.
The job cuts happen as world tech corporations face larger regulatory stress in Malaysia, the place the federal government has requested social media operators to use for an working licence by January as a part of an effort to fight cyber offences.
Malaysia reported a pointy enhance in dangerous social media content material earlier this 12 months and urged corporations, together with TikTok, to step up monitoring on their platforms.
