Source: Foreign Policy
Owing to the increasing demand for TikTok in the countries in North Africa and the Middle East, the social media company is putting added emphasis on content moderation. However, the people responsible for this job are reportedly viewing this for hours with minimal compensation or necessary psychological assistance.
One such moderator, Imami fell victim to watching such gross videos, with one of them having a deep impact on her for years owing to her fondness for cats. A video showing cruelty against animals, a cat in this case, can have a profound impact on a viewer which could be etched to their minds for ages. As Imami was forced to take up this damaging job which just paid $2 an hour, she felt the need to keep her work away from her life.
Clearly, this is not an isolated incident as about nine such moderators in Morocco, working in the Majorel contract with TikTok reported similar cases of suffering mental distress. According to them, both the parties hardly contributed to try and lessen the impact of such reviewing. Moreover, they had even set in place an atmosphere of somewhat constant monitoring and almost impossible targets.
The increasing graphic content on the platform:
Wasim, who provides Majorel training to other after having worked as a moderator, stated how this job grows into something rather sickening which takes a toll on the people. He stated how the amount of graphic images and videos could increase as much as Meta Facebook very soon. Social media companies such as these both depend on common sources of firms to recruit content moderators in places like Morocco.
In order to tackle this incoming growth, TikTok owner ByteDance has significantly ramped up its contributions to content moderation in the these areas. A former advisor from Majorel suggested how at least 1,400 moderators are working on the company’s agreement with the social media platform. On the other hand, TikTok’s use of AI for moderation is rather limited owing to its bad comprehension of languages other than English.
Moreover, Majorel moderators for TikTok apparent also got hold of lesser breaks as opposed to their opposition in the United States, with a great disparity. This has come across as a major problem among TikTok moderators as they seem to face issues related to pay as along as other forms of compensation.
