TikTok is consulting on hundreds of job cuts in its trust and safety teams as it increases its reliance on artificial intelligence to moderate content.
TikTok has announced plans to make hundreds of content moderators redundant as the social media platform increases its use of artificial intelligence to police harmful content.
The company confirmed it is consulting on reducing its workforce in Ireland by around 300 roles as part of a wider restructuring of its trust and safety operations.
TikTok said the consultation will also affect teams in other markets, although it has not disclosed which countries are involved.
Content moderators play a key role in identifying and removing harmful material from the platform. Because TikTok organises moderation by language rather than geography, staffing changes can affect users worldwide rather than a single region.
A TikTok spokesperson said: “We are exploring a reorganisation to strengthen our global operating model for Trust and Safety, including proposals to evolve the way we work to ensure teams remain scalable and agile, the creation of hundreds of new specialist roles here in Dublin and redeployment opportunities, and advancing platform safety through the latest technological innovations.”
The move follows previous reductions in TikTok’s moderation workforce. More than 400 trust and safety employees left the company’s London office last year, prompting concerns from MPs about the potential impact on online safety.
In November, Dame Chi Onwurah, chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, warned the cuts posed a “real risk to the lives of TikTok users” and questioned whether the platform could continue to effectively protect users from harmful content.
TikTok said automated systems are already responsible for the overwhelming majority of moderation activity. According to the company, 97 per cent of content removed between January and April this year was detected by AI, while 99 per cent of AI-flagged content was taken down before being reported by users.
However, current and former moderators have questioned whether the technology is ready to replace human reviewers.
One moderator told The Independent: “We have different models that are supposed to identify guns, for example. Sometimes they do, but they make a lot of mistakes, because if you do a gun shape with your fingers, it will identify it like a gun.”
The employee added that AI systems frequently misidentified blood, mistaking stains or marks on walls for graphic content, and struggled to detect coded emoji language used to bypass moderation rules.
The restructuring comes amid increasing scrutiny of social media companies’ safety practices. Last month, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced plans to ban under-16s from accessing social media from as early as spring 2027, with TikTok saying it looked forward to working with the Government on the new measures.
TikTok announces major redundancies amid AI content moderation push
