TikTok Further Grows in the EU, Reduces Moderation Staff

As TikTok further grows its user base in the EU and reduces its moderation team, questions arise regarding the platform’s oversight and safety.

TikTok has published its latest EU content enforcement and usage figures under DSA disclosure rules, offering new insights into its growth and shifting moderation practices in the region.

Between January and June 2025, this marks the platform’s fifth DSA report, which largely follows previous trends but highlights a few notable changes.

Meanwhile, TikTok is still riding the growth wave in Europe, today announcing a 25% increase in users across the EU since September of last year, with a total of 170 million EU active users.

The platform is also changing the way it approaches moderation as its human moderation workforce is down 26%, but automated enforcement is up.

User Growth Details Across EU Markets

TikTok has announced consistent user growth across all major EU markets, except Estonia, where adoption levels remain low. This is according to its latest transparency report on compliance with the region’s Digital Services Act (DSA), covering the first half of 2025. These European countries also experienced moderate growth.

• Sweden (+12%)
• Denmark (+15%)
• Netherlands (+17%)

To put it in a broader perspective, here is how many millions of users TikTok has by region:

• 170 million European users
• 30 million users in the UK
• 170 million users in the U.S.
• Reportedly, nearly 100 million users each in Brazil and Indonesia
• Chinese counterpart, Douyin, serves roughly 700 million users.

The scale here highlights TikTok’s massive audience, even as the app remains mired in political headwinds such as proposed bans in the U.S.

Content Moderation and Enforcement Efforts

From January to June 2025, TikTok removed approximately 24.5 million pieces of content that breached its Community Guidelines, a 15% increase compared to the previous reporting period.

This uptick is in keeping with rising user activity but also follows pressure in some EU markets over objectionable material, notably sexualized and abusive content.

TikTok also announced that it has ramped up its work on safety and well-being for young people, taking down more posts that breach associated rules. The automated detection capabilities of the platforms have ramped up significantly, detecting:

• 90% of mental and behavioral health violations (increased from 49% in 2023)
• 77% of youth safety-related violations (compared to 38% in 2023)

Since late 2023, the moderation team has decreased by 26%, highlighting TikTok’s plan to use AI-generated tools to identify problematic content instead. With fewer human moderators, the rise of automation seems also to be taking some of the risk off the table.

Advertising Enforcement

In the first half of 2025 alone, TikTok removed 2.5 million ads, up from 1.5 million in the whole second half of 2024. The platform started cracking down on:

• Intellectual property violations (removals more than doubled)
• Adult content advertisements (removals tripled)
• Ads for political content (also up double)

Such moves are helping TikTok enhance its growing e-commerce ambitions in Europe, by creating a safer and more bet-aligned ad landscape within its platform.

Despite all the challenges it still faces, including the overall decrease in automated detection of sexual content in ads, the data suggest that TikTok is developing its moderation and enforcement systems as it grows within the EU.

Bottom Line

Despite some layoffs and rapid user growth, this equilibrium enables the platform to satisfy regulatory pressures while simultaneously cultivating trust among the user base.

You can check out TikTok’s DSA Transparency Report for January to June 2025 here.