TikTok has confirmed it is placing hundreds of jobs at risk across its UK operations as the Chinese-owned social media giant accelerates its shift towards artificial intelligence for content moderation.
The restructuring, which affects the company’s trust and safety teams, comes just days before workers were due to vote on union recognition, sparking accusations of “bare-faced union busting” from the Communication Workers Union (CWU).
The video-sharing app, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, announced on Friday that it is “concentrating our operations in fewer locations globally” with the cuts impacting roles in the UK alongside positions in South and Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia.
According to union sources, at least 300 employees from TikTok’s UK workforce of 2,500 could be affected. In a snap CWU survey, 125 out of 127 respondents said they had been told their job was at risk. The affected staff will see their work reallocated to other European offices, including Dublin and Lisbon, as well as third-party providers.
“We are continuing a reorganisation that we started last year to strengthen our global operating model for trust and safety,” a TikTok spokesperson said. The company aims to “maximise effectiveness and speed as we evolve this critical function for the company with the benefit of technological advancements.”
John Chadfield, CWU National Officer for Tech, condemned the timing of the announcement. “The timing is deliberate and it is deliberately cruel,” he told The Independent. “It is bare-faced union busting, leaves the members who have organised facing massive uncertainty and, from what we can see, they are just going to be offshoring these jobs to a third-party in Lisbon.”
The union had been working with ByteDance since last November to gain recognition for TikTok’s London-based content moderators, who Chadfield described as having “the most dangerous job on the internet.” He warned: “The stuff they have to see is literally the stuff of nightmares.”
TikTok claims that more than 85 per cent of content removed for violating its community guidelines is already identified and taken down by automation. The company says AI can reduce the amount of distressing or graphic content that its moderation teams are exposed to, with 99 per cent of problematic posts removed before users report them.
However, the CWU warned that this business decision would cause wider harm to Britain beyond job cuts. This news will put TikTok’s millions of British users at risk,” a union spokesperson said. TikTok workers have long been sounding the alarm over the real-world costs of cutting human moderation teams in favour of hastily developed, immature AI alternatives.
The restructuring comes at a sensitive moment, with the UK’s Online Safety Act having recently come into force. The legislation, enforced by Ofcom, requires online platforms to protect UK viewers from illegal material such as child sexual abuse and extreme pornography. Platforms must also prevent children from accessing harmful and age-inappropriate content.
Under the Act, companies can face fines of up to £18 million or 10 per cent of their global turnover for breaches, whichever is greater. The timing of TikTok’s cuts has heightened scrutiny, as human moderators are trained to spot signs that accounts might be being used by children and can suspend them accordingly.
Despite the job cuts, TikTok is expanding its physical presence in the UK. The company’s head office is based in Farringdon, London, with a new 135,000 square foot office in the capital’s Barbican set to open in early 2026. This expansion represents around £140 million in UK infrastructure investment.
The downsizing of content moderation teams mirrors a wider trend across the tech industry. Rival platforms including Meta, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube have all increasingly relied on automated systems to flag and remove harmful material, often leading to criticism when violent livestreams or extremist content slip through filters.
TikTok’s financial performance remains strong despite the restructuring. Accounts filed to Companies House this week showed revenues for its UK and European operations rose 38 per cent to $6.3 billion (£4.7 billion) in 2024, with operating losses narrowing sharply from $1.4 billion to $485 million.
Content moderators at TikTok have long faced challenging working conditions. A 2022 investigation by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that moderators working for TikTok contractor Teleperformance in Colombia faced widespread occupational trauma, inadequate psychological support, and punitive salary deductions.
Some Teleperformance moderators earned as little as £235 per month in 2022, compared to approximately £2,000 monthly for UK-based moderators. The shift to third-party providers has raised concerns about accountability and whether outsourced teams will maintain the same standards of moderation.
Affected staff in London’s Trust and Safety team will be allowed to apply for other roles within TikTok and will be given priority if they meet minimum requirements. However, the announcement has left many workers facing uncertainty about their futures.
As AI continues to reshape the content moderation landscape, the tension between efficiency and safety remains at the forefront. Whilst automated systems can process billions of pieces of content far faster than human moderators, critics argue they struggle with nuance, context and cultural sensitivity – areas where human judgement remains crucial.
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Image Credit (Shortened)
TikTok app icon – by Solen Feyissa, licensed under CC BY‑SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
