TikTok increases EU content oversight, lacks Maltese, Irish experts

Video Sharing application TikTok has bumped up the number of people moderating its content in the EU to 6,354 in the first half of this year – from 6,287 in the period October-December 2023, it said in its last Digital Services Act (DSA) transparency report. 

However, the report shows that TikTok still has no moderators dedicated to Maltese and Irish, despite claiming to have “language capabilities covering at least one official language for each of the 27 European Union Member States, consistent with previous reporting periods”.

Lesser-spoken EU languages with fewer TikTok content moderators include Estonian (with six people), Croatian (with eight, who are also tasked to look at Serbian posts), and Latvian and Lithuanian, with ten apiece. 

By contrast, the platform now has some 1,498 English language content moderators, which has been significantly reduced from 2,334 in the previous reporting period. The second largest group is French with 634 moderators (650 in the previous period), followed by German with 597, down from 837 last year. 

The number of non-language specific moderators — meaning those who review profiles or photos — has risen to 1,508 from 413 last year. 

TikTok said it moderates content in more than 70 languages globally. In the EU, it also looks at other languages that are commonly spoken such as Arabic and Turkish. 

Automated content

TikTok’s content moderation is done automatically by default, and in case the system detects a violation, human moderation can help improve the platform’s machine learning tools by providing feedback as well as giving additional context and nuance, the report said.

“Some of the issues which arise on the platform are highly localised in terms of language and region, which requires deep knowledge and awareness of relevant cultural nuances, terms and context,” the report added. 

In total, the platform said it proactively removed approximately 19 million items that were not in line with its policies, and that the accuracy rate for its automated moderation technologies for video and ads was 99.1%.

It’s the third DSA report that the platform has submitted in line with its DSA obligations, which applied to the first batch of Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) as of August last year. The Commission has now identified 25 of these VLOPS, including X, Facebook, and marketplaces Amazon and Shein, for hitting the threshold of 45 million monthly users on average in the EU.

TikTok said it has more than a billion users worldwide, including 150 million people in the EU.

The EU executive began an investigation in February into TikTok’s parent company Bytedance, focusing on protection of minors, advertising transparency, data access for researchers, as well as the risk management of addictive design and harmful content.