As TikTok is getting ready to come under new management, Ashley Tambke writes about the increase in censorship and restriction on the social media platform
The Chinese owned, social media platform giant, TikTok, which has over a billion daily users worldwide, has been in the middle of the growing trade war between the United States and China. Under the Trump administration, the US continues to place high tariffs on dozens of industries as Trump weaponises the tax on imports to attack those he considers to be taking advantage of the US in the international marketplace.
This follows the Trump administration’s initial tariffs on China when he was first in office in 2018. Trump is currently trying to find a non-Chinese buyer for the platform after a 2024 law banned the app in America unless it divested from Chinese operations. To help find someone to purchase the app, Trump states he is willing to extend the deadline for its sale past 5th April and to possibly cut tariffs on China if a buyer of TikTok can be found in time.
Trump told reporters on 26 March, “With respect to TikTok, and China is going to have to play a role in that, possibly in the form of an approval, maybe, and I think they'll do that. Maybe I'll give them a little reduction in tariffs or something to get it done”.
The app was temporarily removed from US app stores and was not usable for Americans from 18 January to 19 January. Multiple potential buyers have been suggested due to the ban, however, nothing has been confirmed as of now. After the one-day temporary ban, TikTok users reported the app behaving differently than it had before.
TikTok has been one of the primary resources for pro-Palestinian voices, journalists, and activists in the ongoing Israeli genocide and apartheid. The strong pro-Palestinian voices on TikTok are a contributing factor to the initial bill banning the app in 2024.
In 2023, Senator for Missouri, Josh Hawley, wrote in a letter to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), “While data security issues are paramount, less often discussed is TikTok’s power to radically distort the world picture”. Hawley goes on to add, “According to one poll, 51% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 believe that Hamas’s murder of civilians was justified [...] Analysts have attributed this disparity to the ubiquity of anti-Israel content on TikTok”.
After the ban, many Palestinian accounts, journalists, and activists claimed that they were either being suppressed, shadow banned, or censored by TikTok where they were not before. Users have since reported that videos with #freepalestine, comments mentioning free Palestine, or even the word Palestine are being deleted or not showing up on the algorithm. Account holders have documented that when they posted ‘free Palestine’, TikTok would automatically flag the video or label the post as hate speech.
Many LGBTQ+ users are also claiming that TikTok is now restricting their content. TikTok used to be one of the biggest platforms for LGBTQ+ creators and activists but following the ban in January, multiple LGBTQ+ individuals have reported censorship. This has been most prevalent with Transgender content creators, whose TikTok pages that focus on Trans topics/advocacy, have been silenced, hidden in the algorithm, or deleted since the ban.
It appears to many that Tiktok is appeasing Trump before a sale is set in place. The new avid pro-Israel and anti-trans stance of the app lines up with the goals and beliefs of the Trump administration. An administration which in its first 3 months in power has gone so far as deporting pro-Palestine activists and stripping trans rights across the US.