TikTok’s new US business, led by a group of mainly American investors approved by President Donald Trump, is off to an inauspicious start.
The wildly popular TikTok app has been on the fritz for several days. While other social media sites have been full of speculation that the Trump-aligned joint venture is suppressing criticism, TikTok insists otherwise, and says the trouble stemmed from a power outage at a data center.
TikTok said Tuesday morning that it has made “significant progress” restoring service on the platform, but users “may still have some technical issues, including when posting new content.”
Some Democratic politicians are seizing on the public’s suspicions about political foul play.
“It’s time to investigate,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday night. “I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content.”
Newsom’s press office said it had “received reports — and independently confirmed instances — of suppressed content critical of President Trump.” Thus, the press office said, the governor wants state attorney general Rob Bonta “to determine whether it violates California law.”
Other Democratic office holders have also shared messages about the matter, seeing it as an opportunity to raise awareness about the new ownership structure.
In a deal required by Congress and brokered by Trump, a consortium of investors took control of TikTok’s US user data and most of its US operations last week. Key investors like Oracle, led by Larry Ellison, are close Trump allies.
Oracle and the other non-Chinese investors own about 80% of the new entity, with Beijing-based ByteDance keeping the rest.
Critics of the new arrangement have questioned whether the new investors will give TikTok a Trumpian makeover and manipulate the app to assist Trump and other Republicans in future elections.
Elon Musk made similar changes to Twitter when he acquired the social media platform and renamed it X.
What went wrong…
Some users assumed similar changes were afoot over the weekend. Huge celebrities like Billie Eilish and ordinary TikTok users said their videos criticizing Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts were stalled in “review” or were receiving shockingly few views.
Some of the videos were specifically about the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, which stoked widespread outrage and condemnation all across social media sites.
Over the weekend, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy amplified the mostly left-leaning concerns about perceived interference, writing on X, “I know it’s hard to track all the threats to democracy out there right now, but this is at the top of the list.”
TikTok eventually responded to the complaints and blamed a data center power outage and “cascading systems failure” that resulted.
In an updated statement on Tuesday morning, the company said, “We’re committed to bringing TikTok back to its full capacity as soon as possible. We’ll continue to provide updates. Thanks for your patience.”
Other TikTok users have said the app won’t allow them to send the word “Epstein” in their direct messages. Enough people complained about that issue that a US TikTok representative told NPR, “We don’t have rules against sharing the name ‘Epstein’ in direct messages and are investigating why some users are experiencing issues.”
In some ways, the current TikTok controversy is the inverse of the conservative outcry over alleged “deplatforming” and “shadowbanning” in the Biden years. Some of that was real, some of it was exaggerated, some of it was just imagined — and all of it became a potent, highly motivating political narrative.
