TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies earlier than the Home Power and Commerce Committee within the Rayburn Home Workplace Constructing on Capitol Hill on March 23, 2023 in Washington, DC.
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To identify and take away offensive posts, TikTok has tens of hundreds of Eire-based staff tasked with content material moderation, CEO Shou Zi Chew stated on Thursday.
Talking on the TED2023 Risk convention in Vancouver, British Columbia, Chew stated TikTok has “clear neighborhood pointers” and that executives don’t “make any ad-hoc selections” when coping with “unhealthy actors” on the web who publish offensive content material on the app.
“Based mostly on that, now we have constructed a crew that’s tens of hundreds of individuals plus machines so as to establish content material that’s unhealthy, and actively, proactively take away it from the platform,” Chew stated.
TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, is beneath intense strain from U.S. lawmakers who need to ban the app over considerations it poses a risk to nationwide safety. Chew’s feedback come weeks after the CEO withstood a barrage of robust questioning from U.S. legislators, who’ve additionally criticized TikTok for failing to forestall the unfold of offensive content material on its platform or tackle its contribution to an increase in teenage despair.
“As an organization, our aim is to not optimize and maximize time spent,” Chew stated on Thursday, including that when persons are glued to their smartphone screens TikTok “will proactively ship you movies to let you know to get off the platform.”
The dangerous content material downside just isn’t distinctive to TikTok. U.S. rivals, together with Meta, mum or dad of Fb and Instagram, and Google’s YouTube, have confronted related questions from lawmakers.
Chew stated TikTok takes the matter significantly.
“We actually encourage dad and mom to have these conversations with their youngsters of what’s the correct quantity of display screen time,” Chew stated. “I believe there is a wholesome relationship that you need to have together with your display screen and, as a enterprise, you already know, we imagine that that steadiness must be met.”
Chew additionally introduced up TikTok’s Challenge Texas initiative, which is on the coronary heart of the corporate’s effort to reassure the general public that the information of U.S. customers will stay on home soil and will not fall into the fingers of international governments, most notably China.
Though TikTok is partnering with Silicon Valley software program vendor Oracle to retailer and shield consumer knowledge, U.S. lawmakers stay involved that Beijing may eavesdrop on U.S. residents or doubtlessly unfold propaganda by way of the TikTok app.
“I can say that we’re constructing all of the instruments to forestall any of those actions from taking place,” Chew stated. “And I am very assured that with an unprecedented quantity of transparency that we’re giving on the platform, we will scale back this threat to as little as zero as potential.”
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