“Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now. A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.
We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”
-TikTok
It was a late Sunday night, barely weeks after the new year began. Discussion about the TikTok ban had been in the air for a while, but it had ramped up in the days before the ban came. Having existed for a while, the ban seemed to put an end to an app that had existed in the United States even before it was called “TikTok”, originally known by many as Musical.Ly before the apps were merged in 2018. Tiktok is back now after a fiasco involving many users moving to Chinese Rednote during the ban, but the attitude many have towards it has changed.
When the app came back, a junior at Pleasant Valley High School named Alyssa says that she remembers it feeling different. Alyssa says that the “FYP (For You Page) felt really different … there were no more “Lives” (live streams) available, and she wasn’t following people she had been following for years”. Alyssa was untrusting of the app when it came back, stating that she doesn’t “understand how Trump got it back”, and doesn’t “want to use something he’s associated with”. She thinks it’s entirely possible that the algorithm has been changed to show less videos under topics that “either TikTok or the U.S don’t want us to see”. A proud Rednote user, Alyssa uses TikTok sparingly now.
Phoenix V. has both similar and different feelings about TikTok lately. Phoenix says, “I have no doubt that TikTok is probably censoring things, I mean, just look at the Wikipedia article about Censorship on TikTok, it’s been proven that TikTok has censored things, and I think it’s absolutely fair to be skeptical of the app for being so thankful of Trump. I don’t think it’s propaganda, but I wouldn’t put it off the table.” Although they don’t trust the app, Phoenix still uses TikTok as much as they did before.
Landon K. feels differently about the app. Although he uses it sparingly, he says that he thinks “it’s silly, y’know, to say that the American government is some Big Brother controlling TikTok”. Landon says that the ban ultimately would have been a good thing, and “all of these conspiracy theories are probably people using TikTok too much, and maybe you aren’t seeing stuff because you’ve interacted with that media less, so the algorithm just isn’t showing it to you.”
Although it can be difficult to find certain and undeniable proof of censorship on TikTok in regards to the “For You” page since January 19th, points made by Phoenix remain something to be considered. If media were to be censored on TikTok, it would be in line with the past of the app, such as incidents in which content related to Hong Kong protests had noticeably received far less attention from the TikTok algorithm than on other apps. (For more reporting on this, this article by The Washington Post makes for a good read: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/15/tiktoks-beijing-roots-fuel-censorship-suspicion-it-builds-huge-us-audience/). Another possible instance of censorship includes one reported on by The Guardian, in which efforts to moderate locally sensitive subjects developed into platform-wide banning of queer topics. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/26/tiktoks-local-moderation-guidelines-ban-pro-lgbt-content )
Without knowing for sure, the TikTok app remains under the skepticism of many, and if the censorship allegations are found true, it could have serious implications.
