TikTok denies influence by PAS-linked staff member

 

Following allegations of having its platform unduly influenced by a political leader among its staff, TikTok Malaysia has assured that it has safeguards in place to prevent such an occurrence.

The statement came after a TikTok creator claimed that an information chief at a Selangor PAS division works at TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, including a stint at its content moderation team.

He questioned whether this was the reason some TikTok creators creating political content on the platform see the viewership of their videos inexplicably nosedive.

The creator also claimed that TikTok has manual controls for determining which videos would go viral, outside of the automated algorithm for that decides which videos would be shown on a user’s “For You” page.

The video carrying the allegation has garnered 177 “Likes” and 80 “Shares” since yesterday, as of the time of writing.

Copies of the video were also shared on other platforms like Twitter, where it garnered over 76,600 views.

In a statement yesterday, TikTok Malaysia public policy head Hafizin Tajudin denied the allegations.

Referring to the PAS leader as a “former employee”, he said the platform’s content moderators do not have any access to content promotional tools.

“We have a robust quality assurance system in place to ensure that the political or personal opinions of our employees do not affect their work quality and ethics, including when performing content moderation tasks.

“TikTok’s content moderation decisions are based on a set of clearly defined community guidelines and have layers of checks and balances including quality assurance and third-party fact-checkers, to uphold safety and ensure fairness in moderation,” he added.

Hafizin said TikTok moderates all content on the platform including political expression neutrally, based on its community guidelines, through a combination of policies, technology, and moderation.

Content found to be in violation of its guidelines may be removed or made ineligible to appear on the “For You” page, therefore harder for other users to find.

Hafizin acknowledged that TikTok does promote a small fraction of videos to diversify the experience of its users and to introduce celebrities and emerging creators to the community.

However, he stressed that it does not allow political advertising on the platform. This was reinforced by changes to its policies regarding government, politicians, and political party accounts in September last year.

TikTok has been under increased government scrutiny in Malaysia since the last general election. Many observers credited Perikatan Nasional’s achievements in the elections to a successful TikTok campaign to garner youth support.

In the wake of the election, content insinuating a repeat of the May 13, 1969, racial riots became widespread on the platform, at least some of which had been paid for.

TikTok had said the videos had initially evaded auto-moderation checks at first but were later flagged and deleted upon manual inspection. - Mkini