California governor Gavin Newsom accuses TikTok of suppressing content critical of Trump | TikTok
California governor Gavin Newsom accused TikTok of blocking content critical of president Donald Trump; launched a review of the platform’s content moderation practices to determine whether they violated state law, even as the platform blamed a system glitch for the problems.
The move comes after TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance said last week that it had finalized a deal to form a majority-US joint venture that would secure US data to avoid a US ban of the short video app used by more than 200 million Americans.
“Following the sale of TikTok to a pro-Trump business group, our office received reports and independently verified samples of suppressed content critical of President Trump,” Newsom’s office told X on Monday, without providing further details. he said.
“Gavin Newsom is launching an investigation into this conduct and is calling on the California Department of Justice to determine whether this violates California law,” he added.
In response, a representative of the TikTok joint venture in the US noted an earlier statement blaming a power outage at the data centre, adding: “It would be wrong to report that these are anything other than technical issues, which we have transparently confirmed.”
The joint venture added that users may notice errors, slower loading times or timeout requests when publishing new content due to the impact of the outage.
“While the network recovered, the outage caused a gradual system failure that we are working to resolve,” said the statement posted online before Newsom’s remarks.
Democrat Newsom and Republican Trump have long criticized each other. Newsom’s accusation on Monday comes as some users on TikTok are reporting anomalies and accusing the platform of censoring their posts.
Steve Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University School of Law, said a video he recorded was being “reviewed” in response to reports that federal immigration officers could use broad authority to break into people’s homes without a judge’s permission.
Casey Fiesler, an expert in technology ethics and internet law at the University of Colorado, told CNN that “it’s not surprising that there’s a significant lack of trust” under TikTok’s new ownership. He said he had trouble uploading videos to the media that alluded to an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
Last week’s TikTok deal was a turning point for the firm after years of battles with the US government over Washington’s concerns about risks to national security and privacy under Trump and former President Joe Biden.
ByteDance said TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC will secure U.S. user data, applications and algorithms through data privacy and cybersecurity measures, in a deal praised by Trump.
Trump, who has more than 16 million followers on his personal TikTok account, stated that the application helped him win the 2024 elections.
The deal sees American and global investors own 80.1% of the startup, with ByteDance owning 19.9%.
Each of the joint venture’s three managing investors, cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX, will hold a 15% stake.
A White House official said the U.S. and Chinese governments signed the agreement.
via Reuters
