TikTok workers who watched abusive and traumatic videos say they were fired after trying to unionise

Workers who were required to watch deeply disturbing videos on TikTok say they were fired after trying to unionise.

The workers were employed as Telus Digital, a Canadian company that provides outsourcing services for TikTok as well as others such as Facebook parent company Meta.

They say that being forced to watch graphic videos damaged their mental health and that they are being punished for attempting to improve their conditions, according to an investigation by The Independent and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Telus says all of the workers were dismissed after “documented misconduct, performance issues, or workforce reductions”, including one case of vandalism and another where a worker made threatening statements.

Technology companies use a variety of automated systems to try and spot videos of abuse and other harmful content before it makes it onto their platforms. But a vast amount of that reviewing is done by human workers, who are required to watch often violent, abusive videos and other potentially harmful content.

TBIJ interviewed 13 current and former moderators based in Turkey, where Telus is thought to employ about 1,000 workers to review TikTok content, mainly in Turkish, Kurdish, Arabic and Azerbaijani.

Almost all said they had been affected by their work, which involves removing videos of terrorism, extreme violence, child abuse, genital mutilation, self-harm and animal abuse. Several reported mental health issues, including depression, stress and sleeping problems.

Moderators are also subject to strict accuracy targets and earn between 19,000 and 35,000 Turkish lira (£400-£738) per month, according to interviews and payslips seen by TBIJ. The Turkish minimum wage is 22,000 lira (£464).

A group of 15 workers has now filed claims against Telus in the courts after being fired in retaliation for attempts to unionise their workplace, according to the Çağrı-İş union.

Deniz*, one of those taking legal action, said: “The work has affected me mentally for a very long time and I still have those scars on me … What I had witnessed during my content moderation, I also saw these things in my dreams.

“There was a video in which a parent was abusing a child … but you cannot help that kid. And when I saw that incest video, I could not sleep for two nights in a row.”

Telus’s moderators are part of the global tech industry’s low-paid, precariously employed workforce, which TBIJ has reported on extensively.

TikTok employs around 40,000 moderators and other safety workers worldwide, thousands of them through outsourcing firms such as Telus. It has recently announced multiple redundancy rounds to reduce the size of its safety workforce.

In November last year, TBIJ reported that more than 100 UK-based safety jobs were at risk, while safety teams in Asia and Europe and Middle East and Africa were subject to redundancies in February, according to Reuters.

Tiktok told TBIJ that its agreements with outsourcing companies required well-being support for workers. The company said it strives to promote a caring working environment for its employees and contractor workforce.

Deniz was one of a number of Telus workers who became involved with Çağrı-İş, a local union representing call centre workers and content moderators, which began organising Telus employees at the start of 2024

“First I became a member of the union and then I began to persuade people to become members,” Deniz said. The union says it recruited 60% of eligible Telus workers, easily above the required threshold for recognition, in the summer, but that Telus mounted a legal challenge against the union’s right to represent its workers. Low pay and a high-pressure work environment were the key issues raised by workers, according to Çağrı-İş’ leader Cihan Sezer.

Telus workers began holding protests calling on the company to recognise Çağrı-İş and later to reinstate fired union members.

“We organised many public protests, meetings and walkouts,” said Deniz. “The company … saw me not just as a union member, but also as an organiser… and I became a target for them.”

Deniz was fired after attending one of these protests. Her termination letter, seen by TBIJ, cited a headcount reduction in her department.

Telus said that all of the dismissals followed a structured process. The company also argues that the union is ineligible to represent its workers after the sector was reclassified under Turkish law.

“[Çağrı-İş] was recognised by the Ministry of Labour and we have the authorisation, but there is a legal vacuum in Turkey’s labour laws … because if the company opposes your collective bargaining … the whole process is in the trash,” Sezer said.

Ülkü*, another of the group suing for wrongful termination, told TBIJ: “After [Çağrı-İş] got our authorisation from the Ministry of Labour, Telus immediately objected, and that caused a lot of workers to lose hope in the union.

“So during that time, I was a vocal and visible advocate of the union, trying to share facts about the union, to not let people’s hope go down.”

Earlier this year, Ülkü was told that his team was being reduced in size and that he was among the low performers being fired. “I wasn’t given training, I wasn’t issued any formal or internal warning and I wasn’t put into a performance improvement plan or anything,” he said. “It felt very sudden.”

Ülkü said he has been unable to find work since losing his job and is struggling financially.

If the workers win their case, they will receive financial compensation based on their length of service. But the legal process will take some months to reach a resolution, said Evren Çıldır, a lawyer representing Telus workers.

“The job is quite harsh,” said Çıldır, who runs his own practice in Izmir. “If people are doing filtering for TikTok they are subjected to eight hours of very graphic content like pornography and child sexual abuse and gore.

“With this legal process, all of this can be exposed. They've been trying to cover it up, but receiving a decision against them will expose all of Telus’s bad practices,” he said.

TikTok moderators work eight to nine-hour shifts, some of them through the night, with one 45-minute lunch break and four 15-minute breaks. The workers told TBIJ that their accuracy, which is assessed by comparing their decisions against those of a separate team, must not dip below 94%.

Seven of those who spoke to TBIJ felt their pay was inadequate, with some citing high inflation in Turkey, which stood at 39% in February. Telus told TBIJ the average pay rise in January 2025 was 44%.

Telus moderators can schedule sessions with a psychologist but must use their break times to do so, current and former employees told TBIJ. Two workers told TBIJ they had been unable to get an appointment because the psychologists are often overbooked.

“I only went once … because when we go to the psychologist our wellness breaks are cut off, so nobody is going,” said Aytaç*, a current moderator. “I prefer smoking.”

Telus said it has “a comprehensive well-being framework, guided by international best practices. This program is overseen by licensed psychologists with experience in managing psychological health, safety, and subclinical interventions in employee well-being.”

The company also claimed it offered “unlimited wellness breaks” and said it rotated workers through teams to limit exposure to distressing content.

Tiktok told TBIJ it outlined counselling provisions to ensure a comprehensive well-being support system.

Çağrı-İş held another protest at the Telus offices last month, and is fighting in the Turkish courts for its right to legally represent TikTok workers.

“The workers that are working inside, they are seeing our actions because we have been outside many times, and we are not giving up,” he said.

Zeynep*, a current moderator, said: “Tiktok is a billion-dollar company. TikTok is one of the largest social media networks in the world, and they are paying us pennies… we've got no future, we’re barely sustaining our living.”

“Workers who endure traumatic working conditions deserve sustained psychological support and fair pay that recognises their crucial role in shielding the public from dangerous content,” said Christy Hoffman, general secretary of UNI Global, a trade union federation.

“It's outrageous that Telus, with a disturbing history of union busting, treats these essential workers as disposable.”