Social media platform TikTok is to cut jobs from its Irish operation, with the Government already informed of the plans.
“Affected employees were informed of the decision and a consultation period is now under way,” Minister for Enterprise Peter Burke said in a statement on Thursday. “I understand that the proposed redundancies will take effect in April this year, once the statutory consultation process has concluded.”
Although ByteDance-owned TikTok has not confirmed the extent of the cuts, it is believed to be up to 300 jobs. The company is now consulting with staff on the potential cuts, under Irish employment law.
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What does it mean for TikTok in Ireland?
If TikTok cuts 300 jobs, that will mean around a 10 per cent reduction in the number of staff it has here. The company hasn’t officially released the number of staff here, but it has grown its workforce significantly in a fairly short space of time.
That has coincided with its explosion in popularity over the Covid19 pandemic, when it signed up millions of users and became both a creative and business outlet for users. It now has more than 2 billion registered users, and 2.3 million monthly active users in Ireland alone.
What does TikTok do in Ireland?
TikTok opened its base in Dublin in June 2020. At that time, it had 20 staff; by August that year, the company announced the company’s first data centre in Europe would be located here. That stores European user data, and is part of TikTok’s move to assuage concerns over access to European user data.
That’s not all it does here. The company also has a sizeable content moderation operation in Ireland that looks after content for the EMEA and Latin American regions, with multilingual content moderators and policymakers based at its Irish operation.
In fact, the Irish team leads TikTok’s user safety strategy and enforcement for Europe and the UK. Last year, it officially opened its Dublin Transparency and Accountability Centre, which joined similar centres in Los Angeles, Washington DC and Singapore. The Irish office is TikTok’s lead supervisory authority for user privacy and safety in Europe.
TikTok’s small and medium business team is also located in Dublin, providing support for smaller companies who want to use the platform to expand their business.
Last year, the company opened up TikTok Shop in Ireland, giving creators and small businesses here another way to reach their audience and make money from the platform.
Is this the first round of jobs cuts TikTok has implemented?
No, there were cuts last year too. TikTok didn’t officially comment on the number, but it was widely reported it would cut between 250-300 of its Dublin employees, most of whom worked at the company’s training and quality arm. However, it was still recruiting for jobs elsewhere in the operation.
This latest announcement is part of a round of global cuts that came to light in February. First reported by Reuters, the cuts were expected to fall at the company’s trust and safety unit, which handles content moderation – one of the responsibilities of the Irish office.
Could there be more cuts to come?
That is the key question. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly powerful, content moderation is expected to rely more heavily on technology such as AI. TikTok last year cut hundreds of jobs in Malaysia – 500, according to the company – with speculation that it was due to a shift to AI.
Given the content that moderators would have to review, offloading some of this to technology isn’t necessarily a bad thing, taking some of the worst material away from human reviewers. TikTok still has tens of thousands of people working still in trust and safety globally.
The company is also recruiting for other roles in Dublin, with around 50 roles currently listed on its website across data protection, the SMB unit and TikTok Shop, among others.
