TikTok restructures trust and safety team, lays off staff in unit, sources say

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SHANGHAI (Reuters) – TikTok is laying off global staff at its trust and safety unit which handles content moderation as part of a restructuring, three sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

Two sources said that Adam Presser, operations head of the app who also oversees the unit, sent a memo out to staff on Thursday notifying them of the move.

The layoffs began the same day for teams in Asia and Europe, Middle East and Africa, two of the sources said.

TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move comes as TikTok’s fate remains up in the air. The popular short video app used by nearly half of all Americans went dark briefly last month, before a law took effect on January 19 that required its Chinese owner ByteDance either to sell it on national security grounds or face a ban.

In January last year, TikTok Shou Chew testified before Congress alongside Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and other tech and media heads in a hearing where lawmakers accused the companies of failing to protect children from escalating threats of sexual predation on their platforms.

Replying to questions from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, TikTok’s CEO had said that the company would spend more than $2 billion on trust and safety efforts.

In October last year, the company laid off hundreds of employees from its global workforce, including a large number of staff in Malaysia as it shifts focus towards a greater use of AI in content moderation.

TikTok says it has 40,000 trust and safety professionals worldwide. Reuters was not able to immediately establish the extent of these cuts.

(Reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)