Content moderation: TikTok working with govt but won't take orders

TikTok Malaysia has assured that it will not adhere to orders from the government regarding its operations.

Its public policy head Hafizin Tajudin added that the government has not attempted to interfere in its operations thus far.

“We will not take instructions from the government. We are first and foremost guided by our community guidelines and have a strict policy against that. 

“Our guidelines are a global standard, meaning we are subjected to robust quality assurances.

“For example, if we didn’t comply with these standards, the global (TikTok) team will be able to detect and investigate it,” he said at a panel session yesterday titled “Tackling Hate Speech Online: What do we need to do legally, socially, and politically”.

Hafizin added that any engagements done with the Communications and Digital Ministry and its minister Fahmi Fadzil have been in TikTok’s capacity as a stakeholder in the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). 

Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil

An area that TikTok has been working with the government in, he said, is fighting disinformation and misinformation. 

This comes after an increase in provocative content on TikTok the week after GE15, which was not taken down.

“Eventually, post the election there was a power vacuum, which led to the spread of May 13 content on the platform.

“Was it an oversight on our end, I will say that it was not as by the time we had received MCMC’s request to take down the content, we had taken down close to 2,000 pieces of content, our AI (artificial intelligence) had been detecting those breaches,” he said.

Hafizin maintained that TikTok had managed to take down 95 percent of provocative content, with 5 percent of leakage.

For the period between Nov 12 and 18, 857 videos were automatically removed by TikTok while 1,126 videos were removed between Nov 20 and 26.

Aside from the videos automatically removed by TikTok’s artificial intelligence-based system, Fahmi previously said the MCMC also submitted 202 complaints to the company to remove content between Dec 5 last year and Jan 1. - Mkini