By William J. Furney
ByteDance, the company behind the globally popular platform TikTok, has made a major strategic shift, cutting over 700 jobs in Malaysia as part of its move toward AI-driven content moderation. This transition reflects a growing trend in the social media landscape, as other major platforms increasingly turn to artificial intelligence to handle the vast amounts of content posted daily.
AI Takes the Lead at ByteDance
ByteDance’s decision to rely more on AI for content moderation is a clear sign of the times. As TikTok continues to grow, its challenges in moderating millions of posts daily have become more apparent. The need to address harmful content, misinformation and inappropriate material in real time has outpaced the capacity of human moderators. AI moderation offers the ability to quickly detect and remove content, promising greater efficiency.
While AI’s role in moderation has long been a subject of interest, ByteDance’s move signals a significant turning point. The company’s layoffs in Malaysia, which impacted employees mainly involved in content moderation, show a clear shift from human oversight to machine-led decisions. This, according to some experts, could mark a new era of content governance on social media, where algorithms play a pivotal role.
The Role of AI in Moderation Across Social Media
ByteDance is not the only company that sees AI as the future of content moderation. Major platforms such as Facebook (Meta), X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube have also been experimenting with AI tools to handle the enormous volume of posts. These companies have found AI particularly useful in areas where speed is essential –such as detecting hate speech, violent content or extremist material. AI systems can analyse text, images and videos at a scale impossible for human teams.
Facebook, for example, employs AI to identify and remove harmful content before users even see it. According to Meta, their AI systems detect a vast majority of violations, flagging content that breaches community standards within seconds. This proactive approach helps the platform manage the sheer volume of posts, but it’s not without controversy. Mistakes made by AI, such as wrongly flagging or removing legitimate content, have led to frustrations among users and criticisms over a lack of transparency.
Similarly, YouTube has been leveraging AI to manage its vast library of videos. Google’s machine learning technology is used to automatically flag videos that might violate its guidelines, a crucial step given the 500 hours of video uploaded to the platform every minute. But like Facebook, YouTube has faced criticism when AI systems fail to correctly interpret context, especially in complex areas such as satire or political speech.
Challenges and Concerns with AI Moderation
While AI offers promising solutions for content moderation, it’s not without its drawbacks. One of the biggest challenges is that AI systems struggle with nuances, such as understanding humour, cultural references or complex context. This can result in false positives — where benign content is removed — or false negatives, where harmful content slips through undetected.
Human moderators are still essential in many cases, especially where AI systems lack understanding of regional issues or language-specific context. Although AI is fast and scalable, it may miss subtle forms of harmful content that are better understood by human moderators. ByteDance’s decision to cut jobs in Malaysia might raise concerns about the over-reliance on AI and the potential for errors to go unchecked in the absence of human oversight.
There are also concerns about privacy and the ethical use of AI in moderation. AI relies on vast datasets to learn and improve, which often involves analysing user content and behaviour. The more data these systems have access to, the more efficient they become, but this can also affect how personal data is used and stored.
The Future of AI Moderation
As AI technology continues to improve, it’s likely that its role in content moderation will only grow. For companies like ByteDance, the benefits of AI in terms of speed and cost-saving are clear. But a hybrid model — where AI handles the bulk of moderation but humans step in for more complex cases — may be the best approach moving forward.
And while AI is a powerful tool, the nuances of human communication and culture mean that complete automation may never be the ultimate solution. For now, the shift to AI-driven moderation represents a bold move by ByteDance and others, but it comes with its own set of challenges that need to be addressed to ensure fair and effective governance of online spaces.
* Image: iStock.