Summary
TikTok users reported that searches for anti-Trump content, such as “Donald Trump rigged election,” returned “No results found” messages in the U.S., while the same searches worked abroad.
Users demonstrated via VPNs that the restrictions seem specific to U.S. accounts, sparking accusations of censorship and claims TikTok is becoming “Trump’s propaganda arm.”
Some anti-Trump hashtags also appear blocked, while pro-Trump terms remain visible.
TikTok has not commented on the issue, fueling further concerns about free speech and potential political influence over the platform.
They absolutely should be helping to stop the spread of misinformation. We rag on Social Media for amplifying misinformation all the time and now suddenly it’s a bad thing to stop it?
Personally I’ve always been anti-censorship.
I think the “community notes” under posts are sufficient imo.
TikTok could do the same, but censoring is a lose-lose
You have to look at where the motivation is. Trump just “unbanned” tiktok in the US. That means that if ByteDance wants to keep doing business in the US, and continue raking in all those profits from the US market, they are beholden to Trump. Trump effectively controls TikTok in the US via extortion.
TikTok can’t be trusted in the US because it’s very existence here relies on appeasing Trump. So no, TikTok doing any fact checking is terrible because it is now a propaganda arm of the US government.
That’s quite a leap. And in reality all social media is on the block with that law. It’s an executive declaration. No court, no hearing, no due process. Just a declaration and you have to sell or shut down. So is the entire Internet now a propaganda arm of the US government?
The law that banned tiktok was about national security concerns of foreign companies. It does not apply to US-based social media companies.
Trump used an executive order to delay the law by 90 days. This is coercive in nature. It makes Trump look like the good guy to millions of tiktok users in the US for “saving” tiktok. It also lets Trump extort ByteDance via manipulation of TikTok (pushing US propaganda) in exchange for staying in the US market.
You should really go read the law instead of the marketing they used. There is no requirement for fact finding. It’s an executive decision. That’s it. The President’s guy declares your company to be a foreign adversary controlled social media company and that’s it. Sell or shut down.
I read the law, and I disagree with you that the president can simply declare a social media company to be foreign-adversary controlled and shut it down with an EO. At the very least there is an appeals process that would go through DC court of appeals for any accused social media company. I am not a lawyer though, so I could be wrong. Either way, I think it gives the president too much power.
But this doesn’t change the fact that ByteDance is still being manipulated by the president for power and propaganda purposes; that seems pretty clear to me when searches critical of trump came up empty on accounts using US IP addresses, as opposed to non-US accounts or US accounts using a VPN.
Then you’ve fallen for this bit of misinformation too. I already submitted a screenshot showing that searches critical of Trump are actually still working. They found one specific phrase tied to a conspiracy theory. That’s it.
And I’d like to know where in the law this appeals court remedy is mentioned as I did not see that.