TikTok publicly apologized to a 17-year-old teenage girl who was suspended from the platform shortly after posting a series of videos condemning China's oppression of the Uighur Muslims.
Feroza Aziz remains unconvinced by TikTok's apology, saying she believes TikTok is helping China censor politically sensitive content.
TikTok is owned by a Chinese company. Tech firms in China often adhere to the Communist Party's demands to censor politically sensitive content.
TikTok has repeatedly denied censoring or demoting politically controversial content, and tried to emphasize its fun and lighthearted videos instead. It's not doing a great job.
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TikTok's catastrophic public-relations fallout over its suspension of a teen girl who posted anti-China videos has shown that it's almost impossible to run a viral social-media platform while following Beijing's rules.
On Wednesday, the video-streaming app issued a public apology to 17-year-old Feroza Aziz, whose account was suspended after she posted a series of viral videos condemning China's mass surveillance and detention of Uighur Muslims.
TikTok has repeatedly denied suspending Aziz over the anti-China clips, claiming she was suspended for posting a video featuring the terrorist Osama bin Laden on a previous account.
That video showed a list of celebrity crushes, with bin Laden's image added as part of "dark humor" at the end, Aziz told Business Insider on Wednesday.
This is the “video of Osama bin Laden” TikTok says got Feroza Aziz suspended from the platform. https://t.co/yRpiH9jIaN pic.twitter.com/yzL2FjUjLv — Alexandra Ma (@AlexandraMa15) November 27, 2019
Aziz has publicly doubted that the bin Laden video was the cause of her suspension, saying she thinks she was punished for standing up to China instead.
The inherent difficulty of running a social media platform according to China's rules
The entire episode has brought to light the inherent difficulty of running a viral social-media platform while being under China's watchful eye.
TikTok, which is run by Chinese company ByteDance, has exploded in popularity since it launched in 2017, having accumulated a total of 1.5 billion downloads in two years and outperforming Instagram in app downloads this year.
It is mainly popular among teens, who create and share content that mostly involve memes, dances, and lip-syncing.
Simultaneously, it has faced mounting criticism and concern over its links to the Chinese government, which often compels domestic tech companies to censor content.
TikTok's Chinese counterpart, Douyin — which does not share the same content or userbase as TikTok — has routinely purged anti-China videos from its platform.
Leaked internal instructions show China's influence
TikTok, which is based in California, has repeatedly tried to distance itself from its Chinese links. ByteDance is currently trying to separate TikTok from much of its Chinese operations.
But a series of leaked internal instructions, published by multiple news outlets in recent months, show TikTok moderators being told to remove or demote politically and culturally sensitive posts. Here's a rundown of those reports:
TikTok has been keen to emphasize its lighthearted side, with the company's leader Alex Zhu telling The New York Times earlier this month that political discussion is allowed as long as it aligns with the platform's "creative and joyful experience."
The US military is trying to figure out what China can 'see' inside TikTok
But despite these attempts, it has not managed to shake off any suspicion of its links to Chinese censorship.
The US Army and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a national-security panel, are currently investigating how it handles user data.
TikTok has publicly apologized to Aziz, but she still isn't convinced — meaning the company still has a lot to answer for.
"I really doubt that TikTok is ultimately saying the truth about what's happening here," Aziz told Business Insider on Wednesday. "I think that something is going on and TikTok doesn't want people to find out what's going in China."
dethb0y on November 30th, 2019 at 18:28 UTC »
had you told me that fucking TikTok, which i only know of as "that site where people make little 30 second music videos of lipsyncing to songs" would be a political issue in 2019, i would not have believed you even six months ago.
Sureshot006 on November 30th, 2019 at 15:24 UTC »
TikTok is a spy app for China but many people have the desperate need to be entertained so they don't care
whchin on November 30th, 2019 at 13:24 UTC »
Depends on where you run it. Wechat seems to have no problems censoring its users.