Within a month after President Joe Biden of the US signed a national ban against the social media app, TikTok, the company is planning to lay off a large percentage of its 1,000 global employees from within its operations and marketing teams beginning this week, said The Information.
Currently owned by Chinese company ByteDance, it is considering the team handling user support and user communications. Employees who will remain in the team will be distributed to TikTok’s other teams, such as trust and safety, marketing, as well as content and product teams.
According to a CNN report, the layoff has long been in the works at the social media platform but was delayed after turnovers in some of its teams. The layoffs are also not related to the legal issues faced by TikTok in the United States, which could potentially end with the platform being banned in the country.
Earlier in March, about 1,000 employees were laid off in the company’s Feishu unit, in China. Feishu develops collaboration tools for businesses, similar to Slack or Microsoft Teams. ByteDance’s decision to cut jobs at Feishu is in line with how China’s tech industry is looking at its operations.
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