Unions and online safety campaigners call on MPs to stop TikTok “sacrificing online safety” with mass AI-driven job cuts
Unions and some of the UK’s highest profile online safety campaigners have called on MPs to urgently investigate a proposed wave of over 400 job cuts from TikTok’s London office.
The redundancies are targeted at the ‘Trust and Safety Team’, which is responsible for protecting users and communities from harmful online content - including deep fakes, toxicity and abuse.
In an open letter to Chi Onwurah MP, Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, online safety campaigners along with TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak and CWU General Secretary Dave Ward say the committee must investigate and examine the implications for UK online safety and workers’ rights.
Letter signatories – which include prominent online safety campaigners such as Ian Russell, Adele Zeynep Walton and Alice Hendy MBE – warn that up to 30 million TikTok users (including an estimated 1 million children under the age of 13) are at risk without safety-critical staff working in content moderation.
Dear Chi Onwurah MP, chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee,
In June 2025 TikTok made an announcement to much fanfare about the company’s UK expansion and creation of hundreds of jobs amid a “deep commitment to safety and to creating an enjoyable and secure digital space”.
Three months later TikTok announced a devastating wave of over 400 job losses from the London office.
Every single redundancy is targeted at the ‘Trust and Safety Team’, effectively ending content moderation in London - with similar cuts to human moderation happening worldwide.
These safety-critical workers are the frontline of protecting users and communities from deep fakes, toxicity and abuse.
The UK has 30 million TikTok users, of which well over 1 million are estimated by the official regulator to be children under 13 - despite TikTok’s own rules stating that 13 is the minimum age to create an account.
TikTok is already subject to an investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office for misuse of children’s data.
And now it is looking to replace skilled UK workers with unproven AI-driven content moderation and with workers in places like Kenya or the Philippines who are subject to gruelling conditions, poverty pay and precarity as they toil for Big Tech’s billionaires.
The mass UK job cuts were announced just eight days before workers were scheduled to vote on union recognition with the United Tech and Allied Workers, the tech-focused branch of the Communication Workers Union. These workers sought a union for job security and protection for whistleblowing on unethical practices.
There is no proper business case for making these redundancies. TikTok’s revenues are booming – with a 40% increase for the UK and Europe alone.
Yet the company has decided to cut corners. We believe this decision is an act of union-busting - at the cost of workers’ rights, user safety and the integrity of online information.
We call on TikTok to:
- Reverse the planned Trust and Safety redundancies in London
- Maintain robust human-led content moderation standards
- Respect workers' rights to organise without interference
And we ask your committee to:
- Investigate these developments through the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, inviting union representatives to provide evidence regarding the importance of human moderation and regarding TikTok's union-busting.
- Examine the implications for UK online safety and worker rights of TikTok’s actions and investigate what legislative steps could be taken to prevent offshoring or replacing human moderators with AI.
Signatories include
- Trades Union Congress
- Communication Workers Union & United Tech and Allied Workers
- Ian Russell MBE, Chair, Molly Rose Foundation
- Imran Ahmed, CEO, Center for Countering Digital Hate
- Adele Zeynep Walton, Campaigner, families and survivors to prevent online suicide harms
- Özlem Walton, Campaigner, families and survivors to prevent online suicide harms
- Alice Hendy MBE, CEO and founder, Ripple Suicide Prevention
- Professor Sonia Livingstone, Director, Digital Futures for Children
- Arturo Bejar, Meta whistleblower, Advocate for Teen Safety Online
- Professor Clare McGlynn, Durham Law School and leading expert on online safety
- Maeve Walsh, Director, Online Safety Act Network
- Professor Olga Jurasz, Director, Centre for Protecting Women Online
- tèmítópé lasade-anderson, Executive Director, Glitch
- Sophie Lennox, communications officer, Everyone’s Invited
- Duncan McCann, Head of Tech & Data Campaigns, Good Law Project
- Paul Jones, Founder, FlippGen CIC
- Diarmaid McDonald, Director, Just Treatment
- Jessica Davies, Women’s safety and online misogyny campaigner and author
- Dr. Elinor Carmi, Senior Lecturer at City St George's University of London
- Ctrl+Alt+Reclaim
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