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

TikTok is shedding world workers at its belief and security unit which handles content material moderation as a part of a restructuring, three sources aware of the matter mentioned on Thursday.

Two sources mentioned that Adam Presser, operations head of the app who additionally oversees the unit, despatched a memo out to workers on Thursday notifying them of the transfer.

The layoffs started the identical day for groups in Asia and Europe, Middle East and Africa, two of the sources mentioned.

TikTok didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

The transfer comes as TikTok’s destiny stays up within the air. The favored brief video app utilized by almost half of all People went darkish briefly final month, earlier than a regulation took impact on January 19 that required its Chinese language proprietor ByteDance both to promote it on nationwide safety grounds or face a ban.

In January last year, TikTok Shou Chew testified earlier than Congress alongside Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and different tech and media heads in a listening to the place lawmakers accused the businesses of failing to guard kids from escalating threats of sexual predation on their platforms.

Replying to questions from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, TikTok’s CEO had mentioned that the corporate would spend greater than $2 billion on belief and security efforts.In October final yr, the corporate laid off tons of of staff from its world workforce, together with a lot of workers in Malaysia because it shifts focus in direction of a better use of AI in content material moderation.

TikTok says it has 40,000 belief and security professionals worldwide. Reuters was not in a position to instantly set up the extent of those cuts.