TikTok “must come clean” about plans to axe hundreds of UK jobs in favour of AI moderation, campaigners warn, as MPs cast doubt on the platform’s ability to protect users from harmful content without human oversight.

In an open letter addressed to Chi Onwurah MP, chair of the Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) warned 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. 

“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,” cautioned the trade body.

“These safety-critical workers are the frontline of protecting users and communities from deep fakes, toxicity and abuse.” 

The TUC’s letter slammed TikTok for offering “no proper business case” for the job cuts, citing figures from Forbes that the social media firm raked in $6.3 billion (£4.8bn) in European revenue last year, a 38% surge.

The move raises a “string of questions”, the campaigners said, including whether TikTok has assessed the safety impact of the cuts on UK users, and how the company plans to offshore jobs to countries with weaker labour protections.

The letter, signed by execs of the Molly Rose Foundation, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, and Digital Futures for Children, among others, said that the decision to cut core safety jobs is “an act of union-busting”, and comes at the cost of workers’ rights and user safety.

“It is time for TikTok to come clean,” said Paul Nowak, TUC General Secretary. 

“Time and time again, they have been asked about the impact of these cuts on the safety of millions of Brits, and time and time again, they have failed to provide a good enough answer.”

Responding to the TUC’s letter, TikTok’s director for public policy in Northern Europe, Ali Law, wrote to MPs, fiercely rejecting the campaigners’ claims, including the accusations of union-busting.

TikTok said that while 400 jobs in London are at risk, roughly a third of impacted roles are in the AI Data Service and Operations team, responsible for services like data labelling, with the cuts part of a wider set of changes affecting similar teams in Europe, the Middle East and Asia 

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AI is a central part of these changes, with the firm’s most recent transparency report showing that 86% of harmful content removed is now done so by automation, improving speed and consistency, as well as ensuring human moderators are saved from dealing with harmful graphic content.

“To be clear, the proposals that have been put forward, both in the UK and globally, are solely designed to improve the speed and efficacy of our moderation processes in order to increase safety on our platform,” said Law. 

For its part, Parliament’s tech committee moved quickly to respond, with Dame Onwurah demanding answers from TikTok in her own letter, questioning how the company can uphold its duty to protect users under the Online Safety Act while slashing its Trust and Safety team.

“The job losses and rationale you have provided for them appears to contradict the clear commitments that TikTok made only recently to us,” wrote Onwurah, citing written evidence provided by the firm that it has ‘tens of thousands’ of safety professionals dedicated to reviewing content ‘around the clock’.

Giving TikTok until 10th November to respond, the committee asked the platform to confirm the scale of the cuts, whether risk assessments had been undertaken, and how these jobs would be replaced.