TikTok to shed hundreds of jobs in Ireland

The move will affect the social media giant’s training and quality teams, many of which are based in Dublin. Staff affected currently work with TikTok’s moderators.

TikTok employs around 3,000 people at its Dublin headquarters. The move comes on the same day that the European Commission announced a new investigation into child safety at TikTok.

TikTok is the latest tech giant to shed jobs in Ireland so far this year, after hundreds of roles have been eliminated in a series of reorganisation and downsizing rounds.

“As we continue to deliver on our unwavering commitment to safeguard the TikTok community, we’re undertaking a redesign of our training and quality team that will enable us to further enhance our quality assurance processes,” a spokesperson said.

“Our priority is supporting affected employees through this transition to minimise the impact of the changes. Ireland remains a hugely important base for us and we’re continuing to hire for roles across our business here.”

The company says that it expects the majority of the workers to be offered alternative posts within the company, and that TikTok’s moderation efforts would not be affected.

Meanwhile, EU industry chief Thierry Breton today said that the European Commission had launched an investigation into whether TikTok – owned by Chinese company ByteDance – breached online content rules aimed at protecting children and ensuring transparent advertising.

Today’s News in 90 Seconds – February 19th

Mr Breton said he took the decision after analysing the short-video app’s risk assessment report and its replies to requests for information.

“Today we open an investigation into TikTok over suspected breach of transparency and obligations to protect minors,” said Mr Breton on X, adding that the proble would examine “addictive design and screen time limits, rabbit hole effect, age verification and default privacy settings”.

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which applies to all online platforms since February 17, requires in particular very large online platforms and search engines to do more to tackle illegal online content and risks to public security.

TikTok could face fines of up to 6pc of its global turnover if found guilty of breaching DSA rules.

TikTok said it would continue to work with experts and the industry to keep young people on its platform safe and that it looked forward to explaining this work in detail to the European Commission.