{"id":364479,"date":"2025-08-22T11:09:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T11:09:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/364479\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T11:09:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T11:09:10","slug":"tiktok-to-lay-off-hundreds-of-uk-moderators-as-it-shifts-to-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/364479\/","title":{"rendered":"TikTok to lay off hundreds of UK moderators as it shifts to AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

TikTok is poised to lay off hundreds of staff in London working on content moderation and security, just as the UK\u2019s Online Safety Act comes into full force requiring international tech companies to prevent the spread of dangerous material or face huge fines.<\/p>\n

UK staff in the Chinese-owned group\u2019s trust and safety department received an email on Friday morning stating that \u201cwe are considering that moderation and quality assurance work would no longer be carried out at our London site\u201d, as it looks to automate more of that work using artificial intelligence. <\/p>\n

ByteDance-owned TikTok<\/a> said several hundred jobs in its trust and safety team could be affected across the UK as well as south and south-east Asia, as it begins a collective consultation process, part of a global reorganisation of its content moderation efforts. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe proposed changes are intended to concentrate operation expertise in specific locations,\u201d according to the email, seen by the Financial Times, which said the company would hold a town-hall meeting with affected staff on Friday morning.<\/p>\n

The viral video platform also noted that \u201ctechnological advances, such as the enhancement of large language models, are reshaping our approach\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Communication Workers Union estimates that there are about 300 people working in the company\u2019s trust and safety department in London, and the majority will be affected. <\/p>\n

The move comes just weeks after key parts of the UK\u2019s flagship Online Safety Act came into force, which required companies to introduce age checks<\/a> on users attempting to access potentially harmful content.<\/p>\n

Companies that fail to comply with the new requirements \u2014 as well as rules stipulating tech companies must remove dangerous and illegal material swiftly \u2014 face penalties of up to \u00a318mn, or 10 per cent of global turnover, whichever is greater.<\/p>\n

Recommended<\/p>\n

\"Montage<\/a><\/p>\n

TikTok introduced new \u201cage assurance\u201d controls last month to comply with new requirements to limit the exposure of under-18s to harmful content. <\/p>\n

Like other social media<\/a> groups YouTube and Meta, TikTok has said it plans to rely on machine-learning technology to \u201cinfer\u201d a user\u2019s age based on how they use the site and who they communicate with. These AI-based systems have not yet been endorsed by the regulator Ofcom, which is assessing compliance. <\/p>\n

The decision to lay off staff comes amid a wider effort by the Chinese tech group to rationalise its European operations. It is particularly focusing on slimming down or shuttering moderation teams in individual markets and centralising those operations in regional hubs, such as Dublin and Lisbon, as part of a global reorganisation. TikTok this month announced it was shutting its trust and safety team in Berlin. <\/p>\n

TikTok said: \u201cWe are continuing a reorganisation 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 maximise effectiveness and speed as we evolve this critical function for the company with the benefit of technological advancements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t want to have human moderators, their goal is to have it all done by AI,\u201d said John Chadfield, a national organiser at the CWU, though he noted that the reality for the time being was that the company would relocate the activities to jurisdictions where labour was cheaper.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI makes them sound smart and cutting-edge, but they\u2019re actually just going to offshore it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The cuts come as TikTok\u2019s revenues continue to soar across the UK and Europe. <\/p>\n

Its latest accounts, published this week, show that revenues grew 38 per cent year on year in 2024 to $6.3bn, with pre-tax losses falling from $1.4bn in 2023 to $485mn last year. The figures, revealed in a UK regulatory filing, include TikTok\u2019s UK and European businesses. <\/p>\n

TikTok said in the filing: \u201cWe remain steadfastly committed to ensuring there are robust mechanisms in place to protect the privacy and safety of our users.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-364479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115072110604080303","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}