this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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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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[–] me_myself_and_I@lemmy.world 1 points 8 minutes ago

Ironic that an app monitored and controlled by the Chinese communist party allowed more freedom of speech for Americans. How the turn tables.

[–] pimpampoom@lemmy.zip 3 points 55 minutes ago

I’m not expert and I call BS. No need to be an expert for this hahaha

[–] neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Lol, that's not how it fucking works.

Key words like that don't just accidentally get filtered out with a "bug".

[–] ranzispa@mander.xyz 1 points 13 minutes ago

We were developing a feature to push for those posts, but a bug made it so that they were blocked.

I guess this is one of the few cases in which that could be the result of a bug.

[–] kamen@lemmy.world 1 points 51 minutes ago

Imagine complaining about censorship while voluntarily subjecting yourself to brain rot.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Hopefully the Streisand effect takes place and people wake up to the fact that Israel was blackmailing our politicians with trafficked children and bribing the rest. History will call these people traitors https://www.trackaipac.com/

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I hope tik toc loses so many users it goes bankrupt

[–] DrDickHandler@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Once again, they are using this mainly to censor anti-Israel content. No one is mentionning this in the articles and comments.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

It’s because our government is literally occupied by this genocidal state that was blackmailing our politicians with trafficked children. History will call these people traitors https://www.trackaipac.com/

[–] 4grams@awful.systems 18 points 17 hours ago

Why doesn’t anyone see this for what it is. They put monitoring for certain keywords but fucked up the code and it blocked some users through incompetence. They fixed the filters, but I guarantee they are sending reports to the White House…

[–] Samsy@lemmy.ml 13 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Hey, now I am not able to watch videos about my favorite fast train from Germany, the InterCityExpress, ICE. /s

[–] Riverside@reddthat.com 1 points 21 minutes ago

"Fast" train, going 150km/h half the trip duration lmfao

[–] hakunawazo@lemmy.world 12 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Always remember: If you flip the Deutsche Bahn logo, the customer is depicted.

[–] jaennaet@sopuli.xyz 8 points 12 hours ago
[–] Anarki_@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 17 hours ago

Every time. Facebook said the same thing when things that upset the powers got hidden or deleted.

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 13 points 19 hours ago

Translation: "We got caught"

[–] AmbitiousProcess@piefed.social 56 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Wow, a bug that specifically automatically chose keywords like "ICE", and "epstein", then blocked them from appearing, while leaving literally all other content unharmed????? How conveniently specific and well-timed! /s

[–] jaennaet@sopuli.xyz 8 points 12 hours ago

Like someone else said, it might legitimately have been a bug: maybe they didn't mean for the censorship to be visible to the person using those keywords, and it'd just be everyone else who can't see them. That way you'd think everything is fine but mysteriously your Epstein / ICE content just doesn't get any views

[–] FukOui@lemmy.zip 6 points 17 hours ago

Might not be a lie. They might be silently rolling a feature to selectively censor/ show ICE fascists and accidentally censored all by mistake lol

[–] ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world 41 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This is TikTok in America as managed by Larry Ellison and the US government btw. They Iron Curtained y'all.

[–] D_C@sh.itjust.works 22 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

Balderdash! That type of stuff only happens in dictatorships.
Next you'll be telling me there's a bunch of masked Gestapo goons running around shooting innocent people and kidnapping non whites...

[–] jaennaet@sopuli.xyz 2 points 12 hours ago

masked Gestapo goons

Honestly they're more like the SA

[–] rayyy@piefed.social 9 points 20 hours ago

That type of stuff only happens in shit-hole countries - FTFY.

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[–] reddig33@lemmy.world 117 points 1 day ago (7 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 6 points 17 hours ago

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

[–] VeryVito@lemmy.ml 29 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What? MySpace never tried to topple a democracy.

[–] treesquid@lemmy.world 2 points 17 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) (2 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.

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[–] rayyy@piefed.social 2 points 20 hours ago (2 children)
[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour 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 8 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 2 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
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[–] Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com 87 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Yeah. Right.

"If you get caught, call it a bug." seems to happen a lot this administration.

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

My bet is they tweak the backend instead to derank content they don't like softly next.

[–] chaogomu@lemmy.world 15 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

They're already doing that. There are reports that content from the DNC isn't being served anymore, even to subscribers.

[–] myfunnyaccountname@lemmy.zip 2 points 17 hours ago

By bugs they mean bending over backwards to please daddy.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 53 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Maybe—and I'm going out on a limb here—just maybe, using centralized media to document State-sponsored domestic terrorism is a fucking stupid idea. Especially since the very same platform is co-owned by the State.

Y'all, we already went through this with Xitter. Sorry you fell for it again, but this won't be the last time if you continue to cling to platforms owned by the very people who want to censor you.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

We're not the ones who need to hear it, though.

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[–] Chozo@fedia.io 25 points 1 day ago

Weird timing these bugs seem to have, eh?

[–] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 12 points 1 day ago

How convenient.

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