A new report from Forbes has shared some disturbing facts about TikTok’s moderation practices. The social media giant has reportedly been showing its moderators videos of child sexual abuse and other disturbing content for training purposes.
Teleperformance is a third-party moderation company that works with TikTok among other organizations to review and regulate the app’s video content. Its employees claim that TikTok asked them to review a spreadsheet titled DRR or Daily Required Reading on TikTok which contained content that violated TikTok’s guidelines. This included hundreds of images of explicit content on children.
These employees said that hundreds of people in TikTok had access to this content and Teleperformance could access it inside and outside the office, creating a huge risk of a broad leak. However, Teleperformance denied that it showed its employees any underage explicit content and TikTok says that its training practices have “strict access controls”, but didn’t say if all third-party moderators have that standard.
The employees, however, tell a different story that can lead to potential lawsuits since child pornography is illegal in the US. Companies are expected to report it to the authorities and one employee claimed to do so with the FBI, though it is unclear whether a case was opened.
The allegations against TikTok even claim that Teleperformance showed its employees graphic content as examples of what to tag on TikTok with poor controls over access to that content.
You can read the full report from Forbes here.