Over 500 employees were let go by ByteDance, the company that owns the social media platform TikTok, in Malaysia, according to local media. Citing a source, The Malaysian Reserve released a report on Thursday.
The Malaysian Reserve (TMR) was informed by a reliable source close to the company’s Malaysian branch that over 500 workers had their employment terminated as a result of company emails.
According to the report, the majority of the employees work on content moderation on the platform, which is not just limited to Southeast Asia but also other regions.
According to the report, TikTok uses both human moderators and automated systems to control content on its platform.
TikTok’s artificial intelligence (AI) is trained from human moderators through a process called supervised learning. The goal of this process is to filter out inappropriate, harmful, or policy-violating content. The accuracy of the AI’s content moderation abilities is enhanced by human feedback.
The inquiries from TNGlobal to ByteDance have been passed along to TikTok’s communications division.
In a reply to media‘s query, TikTok’s spokesperson said, “We’re making these changes as part of our ongoing efforts to further strengthen our global operating model for 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 percent of violative content now removed by automated technologies,” the spokesperson added.
As of the time of publication, TikTok had not responded to inquiries about the number of employees let go.
The parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, intends to invest about $2.13 billion to establish an artificial intelligence hub in Malaysia, as per a June report that quoted the trade minister of that nation.
Tengku Zafrul Aziz, Minister of Investment, Trade, and Industry, stated that ByteDance will also expand its data center facilities in Malaysia’s Johor state through an additional MYR1.5 billion investment as part of the deal, which is the latest in a string of international tech companies entering Southeast Asia.
It was also reported that same month that ByteDance would be terminating employees at its Indonesian division subsequent to a transaction in which it acquired a regional e-commerce company and integrated it with its TikTok business. How many employees would be impacted was not disclosed by ByteDance. There would be 450 job cuts, according to a previous Bloomberg report.
The GoTo group sold Tokopedia, an Indonesian e-commerce company, to ByteDance for a majority stake, which was completed in January.
