With the rise of short-form video content on TikTok, ensuring a safe and appropriate user experience has become a significant challenge. I'm curious about how AI and machine learning are being (or could be) used to improve content moderation on platforms like TikTok.

What are some current AI-driven moderation techniques, and how effective are they in dealing with harmful content? Do you think human moderators will always be necessary, or will AI eventually handle moderation independently?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and insights on this!

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avasin Clair
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First things first, it's important to look at the Platform's Capabilities & APIs for recording, distribution, and playback.  This is the universe of I/O streams  (video, audio, text in/out) that could be moderated.  AI moderation techniques typically involve AI classifiers for Video, Audio, and/or Text.  In the case of TikTok, the I/O is user-generated video translated via a codec.  Each platform has its own unique (a) policy for transparency/privacy, (b) moderation tools, and (c) API.  For TikTok, here's where to start:

https://www.tiktok.com/transparency/en-us/

https://www.tiktok.com/transparency/en-us/content-moderation/ 

https://developers.tiktok.com/

From the resources provided by TikTok (above), solutions can be (a) Purchased and/or (b) Built for sophisticated moderation use cases.  TikTok "Researchers" publicly announced they were working on platform moderation as of November 2022 (press release below).  One of the interesting outcomes of TikTok's Researchers was its "Commercial Content API" which has offers advanced (but maturing) short format video content platform moderation capabilities.  Background:

https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/an-update-on-our-platform-api-for-researchers

Note: Due to data privacy and legal restrictions, access is restricted "Researchers" 

The preeminent misinformation / disinformation challenge: the platform always controls the (a) Inflow (User Generated Tributaries of Videos) and (b) Outflow (Algorithmically Curated Stream of Never Ending Videos).  You can only use moderation tools provided on-platform ("Guardrails"), or intercept the content via a Prompt (text) or Playback (Audio/Video) interfaces to apply custom-built guardrail-moderation-loops.  Thus the Platform owner is perpetually the "Gatekeeper" and the "Moderator".  

 Humans will be in-the-loop indefinitely.  Why?  Because it takes human ingenuity to stop human ingenuity from finding new ways break the rules, misuse social media, and abuse systems.  My bet: The smartest human's will reduce Content Moderation to an "exception management" task with the assistance of finely tuned AI.