Social media app TikTok is launching a new content moderation center to allow experts to examine and verify TikTok's practices in order to boost transparency efforts.
This new facility in Los Angeles, Calif. will provide outside experts an opportunity to directly view how teams at TikTok go about the work of moderating content on the platform. Other measures that TikTok has taken to ensure transparency and data protection include hiring a global General Counsel, a Chief Information Security Officer, and expanded their Trust & Safety hubs in the US, Ireland, and Singapore led by industry veterans.
Experts will get a chance to evaluate TikTok's moderation systems, processes and policies, notes the company. That includes, but is not limited to, seeing:
- how trained content moderators apply those Guidelines to review the technology-based actions that are escalated to them, and to identify additional potential violations that the technology may miss;
- how users and creators are able to bring concerns to TikTok's attention and how those are handled;
- ultimately, how the content that is allowed on the platform aligns with their Guidelines.
"We expect the Transparency Center to operate as a forum where observers will be able to provide meaningful feedback on our practices. Our landscape and industry is rapidly evolving, and we are aware that our systems, policies and practices are not flawless, which is why we are committed to constant improvement," says TikTok.
The Transparency Center will open in early May with an initial focus on TikTok's content moderation. Later, TikTok notes they will expand the Center to include insight into their source code, and their efforts around data privacy and security. This second phase of the initiative will be spearheaded by their newly appointed Chief Information Security Officer, Roland Cloutier, who starts with the company next month.
