The social media platform<\/a> announced on Wednesday it would look to reduce its headcount in Ireland<\/a> by around 300 jobs. It told The Independent the consultation will also involve teams in other markets, but did not specify which countries will be affected.<\/p>\n Content moderators are responsible for keeping dangerous and harmful content off the platform. Videos on TikTok are sorted for moderation by language rather than by region, meaning cuts to moderators impact all users, rather than being concentrated on one specific region.<\/p>\n TikTok has said the cuts come as part of a \u201creorganisation to strengthen our global operating model for trust and safety\u201d including \u201cthrough the latest technological innovations\u201d.<\/p>\n It comes after more than 400 staff members in TikTok\u2019s trust and safety team left the company\u2019s London offices last year, prompting MPs to probe the potential consequences for online safety. <\/p>\n In November, Dame Chi Onwurah<\/a>, chair of the government<\/a>\u2019s science, innovation and technology committee, said TikTok\u2019s staffing cuts posed a \u201creal risk to the lives of TikTok users\u201d and questioned its ability to keep them safe. Moderators themselves have also warned cuts to trust and safety teams risk leaving users exposed to harmful online content<\/a> – including deepfakes <\/a>and abuse.<\/p>\n The platform told The Independent that 97 per cent of content removed was taken down by automated technologies between January and April this year, and that 99 per cent of content removed by AI is taken down before anyone has reported it.<\/p>\n But moderators previously told The Independent they do not believe AI moderation is \u201cready\u201d to be rolled out at scale.<\/p>\n One employee said he sees TikTok\u2019s AI get things wrong \u201call the time\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have different models that are supposed to identify guns, for example,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes 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.\u201d<\/p>\n He said a model that should identify blood would often pull out \u201cstains\u201d or marks on a wall.<\/p>\n In comments sections, he said he found AI was often unable to identify \u201ccat and mouse\u201d games where users would communicate in certain emojis to \u201ctrick the system\u201d and violate the platform\u2019s community guidelines.<\/p>\n The news follows increasing scrutiny on social media platforms to protect children from harmful content online. Last month, Sir Keir Starmer said under-16s will be banned from using social media from as early as spring 2027. Reacting to the ban, TikTok said it \u201clooks forward to collaborating constructively with the government on this important issue\u201d.<\/p>\n 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.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-669130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"TikTok](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2257850275...jpeg\")
TikTok said around 300 jobs in Ireland are expected to be lost (Getty)<\/p>\n![\"Content](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2026-06-30T220620Z_1480098117_RC2MKHAOM2XR_RTRMADP_3_TIKTOK-LAWSUIT-SETTLEMENT.JPG\")
Content moderators previously warned AI is ‘not ready’ to do their jobs effectively (Reuters)<\/p>\n