By Rozanna Latiff
KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – China’s ByteDance, the mum or dad of social media platform TikTok, has laid off greater than 700 staff from its Malaysian unit as the corporate shifts focus in the direction of better use of AI in content material moderation, two sources accustomed to the matter instructed Reuters.
The workers, most of whom have been concerned within the agency’s content material moderation operations, have been knowledgeable of their dismissal by e-mail late Wednesday, the sources stated, requesting anonymity as they weren’t approved to talk to media.
In response to Reuters’ queries, TikTok confirmed the layoffs on Friday, however stated it was unable to present a exact determine on the variety of workers affected in Malaysia.
It anticipates that a number of a whole bunch can 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 overview content material posted on the positioning.
Bytedance has over 110,000 workers in additional than 200 cities globally, in keeping with the corporate web site.
The expertise agency can also be planning extra retrenchments subsequent month because it appears to be like to consolidate a few of its regional operations, one of many sources stated.
“We’re making these modifications as a part of our ongoing efforts to additional strengthen our international working mannequin for content material moderation,” a TikTok spokesperson stated 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 stated.
The layoffs have been first reported by enterprise portal The Malaysian Reserve on Thursday.
The job cuts happen as international tech corporations face better 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 improve in dangerous social media content material earlier this 12 months and urged corporations, together with TikTok, to step up monitoring on their platforms.