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TikTok Cuts Hundreds of Jobs in Shift Towards AI Content Moderation

FILED - 22 September 2023, Berlin: Tiktok platform logo is displayed on a smartphone. Photo: Monika Skolimowska/dpa
FILED - 22 September 2023, Berlin: Tiktok platform logo is displayed on a smartphone. Photo: Monika Skolimowska/dpa
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TikTok Cuts Hundreds of Jobs in Shift Towards AI Content Moderation

FILED - 22 September 2023, Berlin: Tiktok platform logo is displayed on a smartphone. Photo: Monika Skolimowska/dpa
FILED - 22 September 2023, Berlin: Tiktok platform logo is displayed on a smartphone. Photo: Monika Skolimowska/dpa

Social media platform TikTok is laying off hundreds of employees from its global workforce, including a large number of staff in Malaysia, the company said on Friday, as it shifts focus towards a greater use of AI in content moderation.
Two sources familiar with the matter earlier told Reuters that more than 700 jobs were slashed in Malaysia. TikTok, owned by China's ByteDance, later clarified that less than 500 employees in the country were affected.
The employees, most of whom were involved in the firm's content moderation operations, were informed of their dismissal by email late Wednesday, the sources said, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to media.
In response to Reuters' queries, TikTok confirmed the layoffs and said that several hundred employees were expected to be impacted globally 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 the site.
ByteDance has over 110,000 employees in more than 200 cities globally, according to the company website.
The technology firm is also planning more retrenchments next month as it looks to consolidate some of its regional operations, one of the sources said.
"We're making these changes as part of our ongoing efforts to further strengthen our global operating model for content moderation," a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.
The company expects to invest $2 billion globally in trust and safety this year and will continue to improve efficiency, with 80% of guidelines-violating content now removed by automated technologies, the spokesperson said.
The layoffs were first reported by business portal The Malaysian Reserve on Thursday.
The job cuts occur 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.
Malaysia reported a sharp increase in harmful social media content earlier this year and urged firms, including TikTok, to step up monitoring on their platforms.

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PlayStation at 30: How Sony's Grey Box Conquered Gaming

The little grey box sold 102 million units. Richard A. Brooks / AFP
The little grey box sold 102 million units. Richard A. Brooks / AFP
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PlayStation at 30: How Sony's Grey Box Conquered Gaming

The little grey box sold 102 million units. Richard A. Brooks / AFP
The little grey box sold 102 million units. Richard A. Brooks / AFP

Japanese electronics giant Sony is set to celebrate 30 years since it launched the PlayStation console, the little grey box that catapulted the firm into the gaming big league.
PlayStation was Sony's first foray into the world of video games and when it hit the shelves in Japan on December 3, 1994, the company needed to sell one million units to cover its costs, AFP said.
In the end, the gadget became a legend, selling more than 102 million units, helping to launch many of the industry's best-loved franchises and positioning Sony as a heavyweight in a hugely lucrative sector.
"PlayStation changed the history of video games," said Hiroyuki Maeda, a Japanese specialist in video game history.
"It truly transformed everything: hardware, software, distribution and marketing."
One of the keys to its success was broadening the appeal of a pastime that had often been dismissed as a hobby for children.
From the off, the firm was clear that it wanted to trash this image.
In part this stems from Sony's rivalry with Nintendo, which was already a dominant player in the sector by the mid-1990s, but whose games skewed young.
Sony 'humiliated'
The original PlayStation can trace its history to a falling out between the two great Japanese firms.
They had partnered in the late 1980s to develop a version of the Super Nintendo console with an in-built CD player.
But Nintendo suspected Sony were using the project as a way to muscle into the gaming sector and abruptly cancelled the partnership in 1991.
"Sony found itself in a humiliating position," said Maeda, so pushed ahead with the project by itself.
The hardware proved to be revolutionary, CD-ROMs being cheaper and storing much more data than the cartridges used by Nintendo and other consoles.
And to further distinguish itself from Nintendo, Sony courted a young adult audience with fighting games like "Tekken", out-and-out horror with "Resident Evil" and "Silent Hill", and military titles like "Metal Gear Solid".
Its advertising also followed a more grown-up path.
Hollywood auteur David Lynch was drafted in to direct ads for the PS2 launched in 2000 -- conjuring a nightmare vision of floating heads and talking ducks certainly not meant for younger audiences.
"The older audience obviously had better purchasing power than children," said Philippe Dubois, founder of M05, a French association that aims to preserve digital heritage.
The PS2 is still the most successful console in history, having sold more than 160 million units.
'New sensations'
Over the past 30 years, the competition has intensified and the technology has been honed.
While Sega and other rivals have fallen by the wayside, Microsoft has entered the fray with its Xbox, and Nintendo is still on the scene with its Switch console.
But the industry is enduring tough times.
A surge in popularity and investment during the pandemic has subsided and Sony's PlayStation division recently laid off hundreds of workers.
Plenty of analysts are also predicting that cloud gaming will soon render consoles obsolete.
Sony appears undaunted though, recently launching an upgraded version of its PS5 with a marketing push that highlighted new AI features.
Bloomberg has reported that the Japanese firm is also planning a new hand-held version of the PlayStation, which would once again pit it against old rival Nintendo, undisputed king of portable devices.
However, for the purists, few innovations were as great as the original console's ability to handle 3D graphics.
The technology was instrumental for the appeal of classic games such as "Tomb Raider" and "Final Fantasy VII".
"We discovered sensations, emotions that we hadn't experienced with earlier consoles," said French YouTuber and PlayStation enthusiast Cyril 2.0.
He said he had collected almost every title released for the PlayStation in Europe -- some 1,400 -- and insisted the formula for success was not complicated.
"For consoles, games are still the most important thing," he said.