Eimer McAuley

IRISH WORKERS AT TikTok who have been put at risk of redundancy have been left “devastated” by the latest round of job losses.

Around 300 workers, primarily in TikTok’s trust and safety teams, were told via email on Wednesday that their jobs are at risk of redundancy due to a “reorganisation” within the multinational’s Dublin-based headquarters, which will involve advancing “the latest technological innovations”.

TikTok has been operating in Ireland since 2020, when it established its European headquarters in Dublin’s Grand Canal Dock area.

The office now employs over 2,000 people working across trust and safety, moderation, vendor management and other operational roles.

The company has carried out multiple rounds of redundancies here in recent years, including the loss of around 300 jobs in 2024, as well as smaller restructuring exercises across its Dublin operations.

TikTok released a public statement to media which said that the latest restructure would “create hundreds of specialist roles” in Dublin, and that it would see platform safety advanced through new tech. 

The company intends to further its use of artificial intelligence to cover the work that these teams carry out, particularly in content moderation (the removal of harmful or inappropriate posts and comments) and vendor management.

In a town hall meeting on Wednesday, workers were told that this reorganisation would involve scaling the teams’ capabilities to support “rapid business growth in the GenAI space”.

Generative AI refers to AI systems capable of producing content such as text, images and code, and is increasingly being used to automate workplace tasks.

Workers were also told that it would involve strengthening “business partnerships”.

John Bohan of the Communications’ Workers’ Union (CWU) says that he suspects this could be shorthand for outsourcing, which, he says, continues to be the dominant force behind job losses in Ireland’s tech sector, despite multinationals themselves increasingly pointing to AI advances when it comes to restructures.

“Companies are strategically using AI to accelerate the outsourcing of labour to lower cost contractors in other countries,” he said.

Bohan added that the “hollowing out” of trust and safety operations raises concerns about how seriously the social media platforms are taking user safety, at a time when the EU is considering a ban on social media sites for under-16s.

TikTok has repeatedly said that it takes user safety extremely seriously and that it is working to progress content moderation on its platform. 

A worker in TikTok’s trust and safety operations, whose job is now at risk, told The Journal that while AI is playing an increasing part in their work, it is more so used as a tool to help summarise meetings, create generated reports, and condense notes.

They added that TikTok is using an internal AI model that is looking at proactively monitoring the platform to tackle harmful or inappropriate content.

“We don’t get to know about how successful that is or not generally, but we know that our workload is increasing and becoming more complex, so it’s not taking away from the work we do,” they said.

The worker added that internally there is a sense amongst workers that they “are not actually allowed to question how AI works”.

They raised concerns about the ability of AI-led monitoring to actually keep people safe online.

“The bad actors out there, the likes of people who upload ‘suicide challenge’ videos aimed at young people, are incredibly adept at getting around algorithms. AI needs to be constantly updated because the harmful content is always changing, it’s human content, and to keep people safe, it needs human eyes,” they said.

The worker said that they had been planning to get a mortgage for an apartment this year, and that now they have been left “terrified” that they are about to lose their job “in a very tough market”.

A different TikTok worker, who is assigned to a different project, said the layoffs have worried the entire workforce. 

“We were speaking in our team this week, and we give our project 3-4 months, at best a year, before we might face the same thing – that’s what the fear is anyway,” she said. 

She added that as a staff member she feels that workers are “in a race against AI”, and that widespread layoffs in the tech sector means that jobs are becoming “really specialised”. 

“On the ground we see that in some instances, AI is just making our projects messier, but we can see the threat too. People are going to have to have really special skills to stay in the industry,” she said. 

Workers have also backed moves to establish a European Works Council for ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, which would give employees across Europe a formal role in consultations on major restructuring decisions, including lay-offs and changes to working conditions.

Supporters say it would provide much-needed transparency after repeated rounds of job cuts and organisational change.

One Irish worker involved in the efforts said the initiative would mean “a seat at the table” for employees, rather than relying on rumours when major decisions are being made.

“At the moment there’s constant rumours and fear, and people are relying on that rather than having clear information. Through the EWC we’d actually be properly informed and we wouldn’t have to depend on speculation — we’d have the facts to work with,” the worker said.