People think political content is being censored on TikTok since US takeover | indy100

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TikTok users in America think political, anti-Donald Trump, anti-ICE content is being censored on the platform after the new US deal.

Last week, social media platform TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, announced it had reached a deal for its US operations to split from the rest of the global business.

It comes following years of tension between Washington and the Chinese-owned app, reportedly over concerns about national security. A US ban was due to come into place in January 2025 if owners ByteDance did not sell its US operations to American investors, but was delayed several times by US president Donald Trump.

Now it seems that a deal has been struck and it hasn’t passed people by that some of the companies investing are backed by Trump allies and Republican Party megadonors.

Since the deal went through, users have reported that the TikTok US app has been glitchy with errors, while others are seeing notable changes to the algorithm, their view counts and some topic-specific content.

Some users are reporting that the word “Epstein”, referring to Trump’s former friend and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, has been banned from direct messages.

Brian Krassenstein posted a video in which he was successfully able to send DMs, until he wrote a message containing the word “Epstein” and tried to send it. A warning popped up which read, “This message may be in violation of our Community Guidelines and has not been sent to protect our community”.

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Another posted a screenshot of the same message they had received in response to trying to send the word “Epstein”.

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In a statement, TikTok USDS Joint Venture said: “We’re continuing to resolve a major infrastructure issue triggered by a power outage at one of our U.S. data center partner sites.

“While the network has been recovered, the outage caused a cascading systems failure that we’ve been working to resolve together with our data center partner.”

It warned users may experience “multiple bugs, slower load times, or timed-out requests”. Meanwhile, creators may “temporarily see ‘0’ views or likes on videos”.

California governor Gavin Newsom said he is launching an investigation into the claims of political censorship on TikTok US.

He wrote: “It’s time to investigate. I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content.”

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Elsewhere, US TikTok users had thoughts.

“The new TikTok algorithm has ZERO, and I mean absolutely ZERO news or politics content, not one word about anything going on at all, not even the weather,” one US TikTok user claimed.

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“TikTok has begun censoring anti-Trump and anti-Ice content,” another claimed, sharing a screenshot where a message appeared to be displaying over some videos saying they are “ineligible for recommendation”.

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Another wrote: “Fascinating that TikTok, under CCP (Chinese Communist Party) ownership, saw less censorship than American billionaire Trump donors.”

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One person claimed: “Trump's buddies have had TikTok for one day and it's already broken as s**t.”

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Someone else suggested: “Turns out that freedom of speech was when TikTok was Chinese.”

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indy100 has contacted TikTok for comment.

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