TikTok denies favouring Perikatan

Popular social media platform TikTok refuted allegations that its moderators have the power to control the feed’s content, which some think was responsible for Perikatan Nasional’s (PN) unexpected victory in the 15th general election.

Its Chief of Public Policy, Hafizin Tajudin, responded to claims that its moderators are politically biased by stating that neither they nor the means necessary to do so exist.

We want to be clear that our content moderators have no power over or access to any promotional tools for material about the former employee who worked in that capacity.

“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,” he said.

TikTok vehemently refutes the assertions made in a video and the ensuing social media comment that was later disseminated.

“We aim to provide community members with diverse, relevant, and entertaining content.

To achieve this, we promote a small fraction of videos to help diversify the content experience and introduce celebrities and emerging creators to the TikTok community.

“However, we do not allow political ads on the platform,” he said.

The government will examine online claims of TikTok moderator prejudice, according to earlier today’s statement from Communications and Digital Minister, Fahmi Fadzil.

According to a speaker in the video Hafizin was referring to, the PAS Gombak information head was a part of the moderation team at Bytedance Malaysia, the regional branch of the Chinese company that owned and ran TikTok.

The speaker mentioned a Forbes article claiming TikTok administrators might use a secret moderation mechanism to make their chosen content viral.

Hafizin maintained that TikTok’s administrators could not control how the material was dispersed around the app today.

“Regarding the former employee who served as a content moderator, we want to clarify that our moderators do not have any authority or access to any forms of promotional tools for content.

“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.