"TikTok to replace trust and safety team in Germany with AI and outsourced labor", 10 August 2025

TikTok workers in Germany are holding strikes over mass layoffs of the company’s trust and safety team. The social media [company] said it is planning to dismantle its entire Berlin moderation team, which removes harmful content from the platform, and outsource the work to artificial intelligence and contract workers. This means the dismissal of 150 employees.

The trade union that represents the TikTok workers, ver.di, has been pushing to negotiate with TikTok over the past few weeks. Kalle Kunkel, a ver.di spokesperson for the Berlin-Brandenburg region, said the union sent a list of demands to TikTok regarding severance for the affected employees and an extension of the layoff notice period to one year. So far, he said, TikTok has refused to come to the table...

Anna Sopel, a TikTok spokesperson, said the company’s proposed layoffs are to “streamline workflows and improve efficiency” and that “we remain fully committed to protecting the safety and integrity of our platform”...

TikTok says investing in AI-powered moderation means being able to more quickly remove violating content before it’s viewed by people on the social network. The company says the technology also helps reduce the volume of harmful videos that human moderators are obliged to review. While TikTok plans to lean more heavily on AI, it says it will still outsource some of Germany’s trust and safety work to contractors...