BYTEDANCE Ltd, the parent company of TikTok, had let go of hundreds of staff in Malaysia.

A source close to the Malaysian branch of the company told The Malaysian Reserve (TMR) that more than 500 individuals were terminated after receiving emails from the company.

It is said that most of the workers are working on content moderation on the platform which are not just limited to South-East Asia, but other regions as well.

TikTok employs a combination of automated systems and human moderators to moderate content on its platform.

The process is designed to filter out inappropriate, harmful or policy-violating content with TikTok’s artificial intelligence (AI) learning from human moderators through a process known as supervised learning, where human feedback is used to improve the accuracy of the AI’s content moderation capabilities.

In June, Bloomberg reported ByteDance laid off 450 staff at its Indonesian unit following a deal where it bought a local e-commerce firm and combined it with its TikTok operation.

In May, CNN reported that TikTok is planning to lay off large swaths of its operations and marketing workforce worldwide.

The global layoffs are expected to hit teams that handle user support and communications, as well as content and marketing.

The American-based news company also added that TikTok’s current global user operations team will be dismantled as part of the move, and the remaining employees will be distributed among the company’s trust and safety, marketing, content and product teams.

TMR is trying to get a response from ByteDance Malaysia on the matter. — TMR