SINGAPORE – TikTok has cut jobs in its trust and safety team as part of a fresh round of global layoffs, marking the second consecutive year the social media giant has trimmed the workforce responsible for content moderation and platform safety.
In response to The Straits Times’ queries, a TikTok spokesperson said: “We are continuing a reorganisation to strengthen our global operating model for trust and safety, including centralising portions of our workforce within key operating hubs and evolving the way we work to ensure teams remain scalable and agile.”
TikTok did not respond to queries about the number of workers affected in its Singapore office.
The company did not attribute the latest layoff to its push for AI moderation, although it said it will keep “advancing platform safety through the latest technological innovations”.
The latest layoffs mark TikTok’s second round of cuts to its trust and safety team in two years. In Feb 2025, the company laid off at least a dozen employees in Singapore as part of an internal restructuring exercise aimed at increasing operational efficiency and aligning its workforce with business needs.
Layoffs were also conducted in Indonesia, affecting staff in e-commerce platform Tokopedia, which TikTok acquired in 2024 after the country banned online shopping on social media platforms.
According to CNBC Indonesia’s report on July 2, more than 450 employees in TikTok Shop-Tokopedia’s technology unit were retrenched.
Bloomberg also reported on July 2 that TikTok slashed about 300 jobs in Dublin, Ireland.
Meanwhile, several affected employees in Malaysia took to social media to share about their encounters on July 1.
An AI quality assurance specialist from TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, described the chaos at the Kuala Lumpur office in a LinkedIn post on July 2.
“Access card was revoked even before stepping into office, guards were escorting three people out at a time…Constantly checking what employees were taking in and out (of the building),” she said, adding that the retrenched staff were treated like “garbage”.
It was not clear whether she was retrenched.
