TikTok plans to lay off around 1,000 employees globally from its operations and marketing teams starting Wednesday, The Information said in a report on Tuesday, along with several other staff members.
The scale of the job cuts is unusual for a media platform currently owned by Chinese company ByteDance, which typically takes cost-cutting steps on a smaller scale. The downsizing reportedly comes less than a month after President Joe Biden signed a law banning TikTok in the US unless it is sold to a US-based company.
Meanwhile, ByteDance sued the US federal government, claiming the ban violated the First Amendment rights of US users.
ByteDance has said in the past that it has no plans to sell the app or its underlying algorithms, but The Information reports that the company is considering a sale that doesn't include the algorithms.
Several unidentified employees told the tech news outlet that the job cuts will primarily be in the social media site's content and marketing teams, with notifications being sent out late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.
TikTok will also disband its global user operations team, which is responsible for user support and user communications. Remaining employees will be reassigned to other teams at the company, including content and product, as well as reliability, safety, and marketing.
TikTok says that by 2023, 7,000 of its employees will be based in the United States, but the layoffs are expected to be global. At the time, it was also reported that the app had 150 million users in the United States.
About 80% of TikTok's $20 billion in revenue in 2023 will come from the United States, the Financial Times reported on March 18.
A representative for TikTok did not immediately respond to TheWrap's request for comment.
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