As per the report, employees in Singapore were notified of the layoffs on 20 February via an internal email, which cited operational efficiency as the reason for the restructuring. Some affected staff had their access revoked within an hour of being informed, while others were retained. Among those impacted was trust and safety product manager Eric Tan, who posted on LinkedIn that he had been made redundant after more than three years at the company.
TikTok's trust and safety operations include more than 40,000 employees worldwide. In testimony before the US Senate Judiciary Committee in January, TikTok's chief executive, Chew Shou Zi, said the company planned to invest over $2 billion in trust and safety efforts in 2024, with a significant portion allocated to its US operations. It remains unclear how many of the global trust and safety staff were based in Singapore or whether the latest round of layoffs affected other teams.
This restructuring follows a series of job cuts at TikTok in 2024. In May, reports indicated that the company planned to lay off a large proportion of approximately 1,000 employees from its global user, content, and marketing teams. In October, TikTok confirmed the dismissal of hundreds of employees worldwide, including a significant number in Malaysia, as it shifted towards greater reliance on AI-driven content moderation.
As of 20 February, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, had more than 380 job openings listed for Singapore on its careers website. ByteDance employs over 150,000 people in nearly 120 cities globally, according to the report.
