Geoff Bennett:
Just days after a group of mainly American investors approved by President Donald Trump took over control of TikTok’s U.S. operations, some users now say the app is censoring and limiting their content, including posts and messages about Jeffrey Epstein and the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis.
One content creator says his U.S.-based followers couldn’t access his post about the shooting death of Renee Good.
Man:
So, this is how it should appear. The latest video under my three pinned videos is the ICE shooting analysis. But this is what my page looks like, according to people who message me. And even weirder, this is how it appears in their watch history, a blank square. The red X-mark is just them pointing it out to me.
Geoff Bennett:
And California State Senator Scott Wiener said TikTok wouldn’t let him share this post about ICE for several hours.
State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-CA):
I am advancing a bill now to say that, in California, it’s not going to be just local and state law enforcement who can be sued if they violate your rights, but federal agents can as well.
Geoff Bennett:
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a new state investigation to determine whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring content critical of President Trump.
The company issued a statement today saying it had suffered a cascading systems failure that had caused multiple bugs on the platform after a power outage at one of its U.S. data centers.
For more, we’re joined by tech journalist Jacob Ward, host of “The Rip Current” podcast.
Welcome back to the “News Hour,” Jacob.
Jacob Ward, Founder, The Rip Current:
Hey, Geoff. Great to be with you.
Geoff Bennett:
So you have a lot of politically engaged users now saying they feel censored on TikTok, videos getting zero views, their reach suddenly disappearing. Based on your reporting, what is going on here?
Jacob Ward:
Well, I mean, I think, on the one hand, it’s important to just remember, in the context of American public discourse, right, that the way we communicate with one another is controlled by a handful of private companies.
And, as a result, we don’t get to know. So, Geoff, we don’t really know, is there some sort of censorship going on here? Or is this, as TikTok’s new ownership says, a cascading failure that originated from one of its data centers?
What I can say is that it seems as if every kind of creator trying to post content, whether they were cooks or makeup artists or political content creators, none of them could post for a while there. And so it doesn’t seem like it’s specifically aimed at it.
But if you’re someone whose work is consistently something that speaks out against the government at the moment, then you’re going to feel particularly persecuted. But it seems that it sort of went across everybody. So at the moment, this doesn’t feel like it was an intentional piece of censorship.
I think this ownership group is too newly in charge to make that kind of move. But that’s not to be confused with the idea that they couldn’t do that. I think the capability of doing so is incredibly powerful and worth watching.
Geoff Bennett:
Well, let’s talk more about that, because people point to Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, now X, as an example of how ownership can reshape a platform’s ideology.
So, given how this deal came together and who approved it, is TikTok vulnerable to that same kind of shift?
Jacob Ward:
Yes, well, Musk, right, rewrote the rules of what any of us expect as to how ownership of a major communications platform would work, right?
And so you’re absolutely right to bring him up because he really sort of, like, changed the change the game. And now we’re in a world where close allies of the president of the United States now are co-owners of this incredibly powerful and influential platform.
And what they have bought from this Chinese consortium and sort of in partnership with this Chinese consortium is a very sophisticated system for censoring anything you want. Because this thing had its origins in China, it has incredible capabilities to detect in real time whether you’re saying things it doesn’t want you to say.
I have been in the position of making reference to the Nazis during World War II. And the word Nazi can get you kicked off of a livestream or get the reach of your post put away. So it’s very easy to do so. I don’t think it’s happening right now, but if in future they decided to do what Musk decided to do, they would have every kind of controls available to them to pull that off, because that is exactly how TikTok is built.
Geoff Bennett:
And TikTok recently updated its terms of service. So what should users of this platform understand?
Jacob Ward:
Yes, in many ways, they have just sort of rewritten a more broad set of language for capabilities that the platform seems to have had before.
But, for instance, they’re saying that they can much more precisely track your location. You can turn that off in your device settings on your phone. They also say that they will be able to follow you elsewhere when you are elsewhere off of the platform. They can send advertising out to get you. So that’s something you can also turn off.
But all of this, I think we should remember, is pretty standard-issue for the surveillance capitalist world we are in currently. All of these platforms are trying to do the same kind of stuff. Just this is a more explicitly spelled-out thing in the terms of services, Geoff.
Geoff Bennett:
And, separately, Jacob TikTok has reached a settlement to avoid being involved in this landmark social media addiction trial. What more should we know about that?
Jacob Ward:
That is such an incredibly big deal in my world, that I have been waiting for this trial to start because of the incredible amount of documentation that has come out already in this.
And so TikTok and Snap, the maker of Snapchat, those two have settled, which leaves Google, YouTube and Meta, which is Facebook and Instagram. And incredible stuff is already coming out that shows not only did these companies deeply value the business — the business value of kids was an enormous thing for these companies.
And they were aware of harms to kids for years and years and years without necessarily acting on them. The companies, of course, say that they are always trying to make improvements. But the discovery we are seeing here is going to give us a view into how social media has worked and worked especially on the minds of children for many years here, Geoff.
Geoff Bennett:
Jacob Ward, host of “The Rip Current” podcast, always a pleasure.
Jacob Ward:
Appreciate it, Geoff.
