Social network continues to downsize across Europe
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TikTok is laying off its trust & safety team in Germany and replacing them with AI and externally hired moderators and content scanners. The move comes a week after 280 human moderators in the Netherlands were replaced with an automated AI system.
Practically speaking, this means that when harmful content is published about someone that a machine has to pass judgment on it.
TikTok says it wants to streamline its processes and that the end user is not going to notice anything.
The Guardian did the summing up, calculating that the social platform sidelined nearly a thousand staff from trust & safety teams in several countries last year.
The Digital Services Act of 2022 requires social media companies, including TikTok, to strictly secure their platforms against malicious content. Otherwise, they risk hefty fines. For the DSA, an age checker is also currently being tested in five EU member states. This should protect children online from harmful content and the impact of social media on their mental health.
Meta actually doesn’t want to do age verification itself at all, and Google wants to outsource it to third-party providers such as local banks.
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