Popular social media app TikTok is set to lay-off hundreds off employees in its content moderation and security team in London.
According to TikTok, an email was sent to all UK staff in TikTok’s Trust and Safety Department warning them of the deployment.
The viral video app company informed that several hundred jobs in its trust and safety team could be affected in the UK, as well as South and South East Asia, as part of a global reorganization.
TikTok’s spokesperson informrf that the company was continuing a reorganization that "we started last year to strengthen our global operating model for trust and safety, which includes concentrating our operations in fewer locations globally to ensure that we maximize effectiveness and speed as we evolve this critical function for the company with the benefit of technological advancements."
The company further informed that their work will be reallocated to other European offices and third-party providers, with some trust and safety jobs remaining in the UK.
This bold move was intiated just after the Online Security Act came into force in July 2025.
According to BBC, the new Online Security Act UK, necessitate tech companies to prevent the spread of harmful material, or be ready to hit by hefty fines.
Similarly, the Act require companies to introduce age checks on users attempting to view potentially harmful content and companies can be fined up to £18m or 10% of global turnover for breaches.
Mr. John Chadfield from Communication Workers Union CWU, said replacing workers with AI in content moderation could put the safety of millions of TikTok users at risk.
“TikTok workers have long been sounding the alarm over the real-world costs of cutting human moderation teams in favor of hastily developed, immature AI alternatives,” said John.
TikTok uses a combination of automated systems and human moderators.
According to the firm, 85% of posts which break the rules are removed by its automated systems, including AI.
As reported by BBC, this big decision came after TikTok faced huge criticism over “privacy concerns”.
This legislation is designed to protect children and adults online by placing new legal duties on tech companies to address harmful and illegal content.
Furthermore, TikTok recently brought in "age assurance" controls to meet these privacy requirements, though UK industry regulator Ofcom (office of communication UK) has not yet endorsed these AI-based systems.
Moreover, the team has failed to monitor new changes and has faced criticism in UK for not doing enough with the new “Data Watchdog launching” in major investigation into the firm.
As reported by the Guardian, TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese tech group ByteDance, employed more than 2,500 staff in the UK.
However, over the past year TikTok has been cutting Trust and Safety staff across the world, substituting workers with automated systems over security concerns.
In September 2024, the company fired its team of 300 content moderators in Netherlands. Similarly, the company again made an announcement in October 2024 to replace another 500 content moderators in Malaysia as part of its shift towards AI.
Moreover, TikTok moderators in Germany also held strikes over lay-offs in trust and moderation recently.
The popular social media firm’s operating loss narrowed from $1.4bn in 2023 to $485m.