TikTok, the company owned by China-based ByteDance, has announced that it will slash hundreds of jobs, affecting hundreds of employees in Malaysia, without providing a breakdown by country.
This move aimed at shifting the company to an AI-assisted content moderation.
According to a TikTok spokesperson, the job cuts were made to boost content moderation.
“We expect to invest $2 billion globally in trust and safety in 2024 alone and are continuing to improve the efficacy of our efforts, with 80% of violative content now removed by automated technologies,” the spokesperson said in a brief statement,” they said in the statement on Friday.
Through this move, around 500 jobs in Malaysia are expected to be impacted, however the exact number of global layoffs is still unknown.
At the moment, ByteDance employs over 110,000 people across 200 cities globally as they use a combination of human moderators and automated detection to review content on the platform.
The layoffs also come after tech giants face increased regulatory pressure in Malaysia from the government, who has introduced stricter laws to combat cybercrime, including online fraud, child exploitation, and cyberbullying.
