NPR reported that TikTok hires people to review videos. One person quoted in the story said she was told, “We would be the front line of defense from protecting children from seeing violence.”
However, that meant she viewed videos depicting death and graphic pornography. She worked that job for about six months last year. Now she and another former TikTok moderator have sued the app and its parent company.
Their lawsuit accuses TikTok of negligence and says it broke California labor laws by allegedly not protecting the workers from the emotional trauma caused by reviewing hundreds of "highly toxic and extremely disturbing" videos every week.
Shop Talk is a weekly panel discussion about journalism issues. This week’s program featured Will Buss, who teaches in the Department of Broadcasting and Journalism at Western Illinois University and advises the student editors at the Western Courier, the students at student radio station The Dog, and the WIU chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists; Rajvee Subramanian, who teaches in the Department of Broadcasting and Journalism at Western Illinois University; and TSPR News Director Rich Egger.
