TikTok will no longer use China-based content moderators for foreign countries

The video-sharing app TikTok has been gaining popularity among young people and is currently estimated to have more than 60 million active users and 123 million downloads, just in the States, and over 1 billion users globally. However, the fact that its owner company, ByteDance, is a China-based company has raised some concerns within the US government. Currently, the use of TikTok is forbidden to government entities’ staff, such as members of the TSA and the US military.

In response to all the accusations, mainly related to espionage by the Chinese government, TikTok is actively trying to make its privacy and security policies known to the US officials, in order to clear its name. It will even open a facility in Los Angeles, where invited people will be able to visit and observe the moderators’ work on the video content.

Now, The Wall Street Journal reports that TikTok has announced another change to further reassure people that the Chinese government is not involved in the platform’s content control. The company has told more than 100 moderators that they will have to transfer to another position within TikTok’s owner company, ByteDance, because it will stop using China-based employees to check foreign countries’ content.

For the past couple of years, the company has localized its content moderation for a lot of the countries, where TikTok is active, including the US, but in other countries, for example Germany, the moderation is still done by the Beijing-based team “Trust and safety”. The team is primarily responsible for tagging videos and flagging problematic content.

Josh Gartner, a TikTok spokesman, said that ByteDance is working on providing the aforementioned employees with job opportunities within the company and they should be taking their new roles within a few weeks. However, it is possible that some of them might end up quitting because of the restructuring.