this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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TikTok claimed bugs blocked anti-ICE videos, Epstein mentions; experts call BS (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 day ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
64 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/59392382

TikTok wants users to believe that errors blocking uploads of anti-ICE videos or direct messages mentioning Jeffrey Epstein are due to technical errors—not the platform seemingly shifting to censor content critical of Donald Trump after he hand-picked the US owners who took over the app last week.

However, experts say that TikTok users’ censorship fears are justified, whether the bugs are to blame or not.

Ioana Literat, an associate professor of technology, media, and learning at Teachers College, Columbia University, has studied TikTok’s politics since the app first shot to popularity in the US in 2018. She told Ars that “users’ fears are absolutely justified” and explained why the “bugs” explanation is “insufficient.”

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[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 121 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Find. Another. Service.

TikTok is dead — just like Twitter. I don’t understand people who cling to these services. Might as well post on MySpace while you’re at it.

[–] felixwhynot@lemmy.world 8 points 20 hours ago

If you are uninstalling, you can try the federated alternative: loops

[–] VeryVito@lemmy.ml 31 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What? MySpace never tried to topple a democracy.

[–] treesquid@lemmy.world 2 points 20 hours ago

They didn't have the opportunity. They absolutely wanted to,

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Remember when MySpace was owned by Rupert Murdoch? Wikipedia remembers…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace

[–] tonytins@pawb.social 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Most of us were teens during the 2000s. No one with fond memories of Myspace knew who Murdoch was.

Also, he only owned it for the latter half of the decade before it got sold off again.

[–] reddig33@lemmy.world -5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh, I guess that means it never happened then. 🙄

[–] tonytins@pawb.social 18 points 1 day ago

Said no one ever.

[–] rayyy@piefed.social 2 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Try UpScrolled. It ranks higher than TicToc and claims to be politically neutral.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Saw “no censorship” in the description, and had suspicions because it’s a common dogwhistle for “we’ll allow the most vile people as long as they’re not technically breaking the law”. Got the app, and immediately scrolled past a “Jews secretly run the world” post followed shortly by a “Hitler was right about the Jews” post. Yeah, the problem with “no censorship” is that it inevitably falls prey to the Nazi bar problem.

[–] Zoot@reddthat.com 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Or Loops? The federated, no special interests version of TikTok. You're already on lemmy, why advocate for yet another corporate social media company?

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

I like the idea of a federated version of that, but there are many problems:

  1. When people scroll, they need an algorithm to choose content for them.
  2. 99% of average TikTok content is low quality shit and it's the algorithm to find and promote what works
  3. All that 99% of shit is occupying exabytes on bytedance servers. Users are uploading terabytes of shit every hour, it's impossibile for a federated instance to keep all this shit on disk. Look how Lemmy is designed for example. I upload an image and then it's stored forever in hundreds of instances. For videos is untenable. Only companies that are profiting from this (for example using such videos for training ai models, or using this videos to hook people and serve them highly personalized ads) can host a TikTok clone
[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

shortform content, is addictive to people.

[–] chaogomu@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And Tiktok isn't the only place for that exact type of content.

People are already jumping ship to other platforms.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 6 hours ago

youtube seems to be peddle what tiktok is doing.

[–] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's probably either sunk-cost fallacy or outright denial