Former TikTok Employee Accuses Company of Bullying and Anti-Union Practices

Allegations and Legal Proceedings

Lynda Ouazar, a former TikTok employee, has brought forward allegations of bullying, harassment, and union busting at one of the world's largest social media companies. Ouazar, along with four former colleagues, has initiated legal action against TikTok. This is the second lawsuit from former employees in the United Kingdom against TikTok in recent months.

Content Moderation and Working Conditions

Lynda Ouazar worked at the company first as a content moderator and later as a quality control employee overseeing the work of external agency moderators. Ouazar, who stated she was initially satisfied with her role, said she was later moved to a workflow dealing with the most extreme content shared on TikTok.

Ouazar stated she was exposed to disturbing content throughout the day, including children being sexually assaulted, abused women, and individuals harming themselves. She alleged that despite moderators watching such content for days, there was insufficient support to keep them safe and enable them to effectively moderate TikTok's content.

Ouazar relayed that TikTok told moderators to take breaks when needed and offered a mental health support platform, but argued that in practice, she and other moderators spoken to by Sky News did not feel supported. On the contrary, she stated they felt pressure to work faster and more intensively, no matter how disturbing the content.

"You Are Monitored by AI All Day Long"

One of Ouazar's most striking allegations is that employees are constantly monitored. "You are monitored by artificial intelligence all day long," said Ouazar, suggesting that moderators are under pressure to meet targets, otherwise elements like bonuses, job security, and salary would be affected.

Ouazar claimed this pressure has a direct impact on user safety, stating, "When you work under pressure and quickly, you make mistakes, which means things that shouldn't be on the platform actually remain there. This is not good for either the moderators or the platform's users."

Union Activities and Dismissals

After two years, Ouazar joined the United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW) union and became a union representative. She stated that during this period, she began to experience bullying and harassment, which she believes stemmed from her union membership. She said her performance review was downgraded from the highest score to the lowest, but she did not receive a proper explanation as to why.

Last year, when TikTok reportedly initiated a major restructuring program to change its content moderation, Ouazar's team was said to be at risk of dismissal. Of the 24 people at risk, 11 lost their jobs. According to the filed lawsuit, all those dismissed had been openly involved in union activities at TikTok.

Stella Caram, head of the legal department at Foxglove, which is providing legal support to the former employees in the case, said, "In this case, we are specifically seeking compensation for the employees. They were unlawfully dismissed for participating in union activities. We wanted to make this a precedent because we have seen this happening a lot all over the world."

Denial from TikTok and Platform Data

TikTok strongly denied the allegations in a statement to Sky News. A company spokesperson stated, "We categorically reject these baseless and untrue allegations. We have made continuous improvements to our safety technologies and content moderation, and this is proven by the facts: record rates of violating content removed by automated technology (91%) and record volumes of violating content removed within 24 hours (95%)."

According to TikTok's latest transparency report, the company removes over 99% of harmful content before users report it. Data collected for the EU's Digital Services Act shows that TikTok has the lowest error rates and the highest moderation accuracy rates among all major social media platforms.

This lawsuit is seen as part of the increasing global scrutiny of social media giants' employee rights and content moderation practices. Similar allegations have been raised in lawsuits against other major players in the technology sector. For example, a former Google engineer was recently found guilty of transferring AI secrets to China.