TikTok claimed bugs blocked anti-ICE videos, Epstein mentions; experts call BS
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.”
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/tiktok-claimed-bugs-blocked-anti-ice-videos-epstein-mentions-experts-call-bs/Open linkView original on pawb.social
59 replies
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.
Remember when MySpace was owned by Rupert Murdoch? Wikipedia remembers…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myspace
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.
Oh, I guess that means it never happened then. 🙄
Said no one ever.
They didn't have the opportunity. They absolutely wanted to,
If you are uninstalling, you can try the federated alternative: loops
It's probably either sunk-cost fallacy or outright denial
shortform content, is addictive to people.
And Tiktok isn't the only place for that exact type of content.
People are already jumping ship to other platforms.
youtube seems to be peddle what tiktok is doing.
Try UpScrolled. It ranks higher than TicToc and claims to be politically neutral.
Or Loops? The federated, no special interests version of TikTok. You're already on lemmy, why advocate for yet another corporate social media company?
I like the idea of a federated version of that, but there are many problems:
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.
Yeah. Right.
"If you get caught, call it a bug." seems to happen a lot this administration.
My bet is they tweak the backend instead to derank content they don't like softly next.
They're already doing that. There are reports that content from the DNC isn't being served anymore, even to subscribers.
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
What a big oopsies, y’all found out about our behind the scenes Zionist propaganda. You weren’t suppose to see that. Pretend you ever say anything.
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.
We're not the ones who need to hear it, though.
You're not, but as counterintuitive as it may seem, there are people who use the Fediverse and big platforms like TikTok, Xitter, etc. My words are for them.
especially one that reaches a wider range of young gen z people who had not been captured by other alt-right social media yet.
This is TikTok in America as managed by Larry Ellison and the US government btw. They Iron Curtained y'all.
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...
That type of stuff only happens in shit-hole countries - FTFY.
Everything to do with it because TikTok is bad for Western imperialist optics and radicalised the youth as the genocide in Gaza was getting livestreamed. Nothing religious or ethnic though, this is just a money move. 🤷
Weird timing these bugs seem to have, eh?
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…
Okay good so they're going to fix it then?
“Oopsies, come back guys!”
Hey, now I am not able to watch videos about my favorite fast train from Germany, the InterCityExpress, ICE. /s
Always remember: If you flip the Deutsche Bahn logo, the customer is depicted.
Translation: "We got caught"
How convenient.
Ironic that an app monitored and controlled by the Chinese communist party allowed more freedom of speech for Americans. How the turn tables.
Every time. Facebook said the same thing when things that upset the powers got hidden or deleted.
Lol, that's not how it fucking works.
Key words like that don't just accidentally get filtered out with a "bug".
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.
Not a chance. Not even remotely possible if they have automated testing (which they do) and qa staff verifying features (which they also do), and smoke/regression tests after deployment (which they do).
I've worked in this industry for 30 years, and the chance that that's what happened, immediately after a takeover by people who really don't want those terms searched on, and the feature was released in that state, and stayed in that state without a hotfix or patch going out and it wasn't caught by their own testers, is practically nil.
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/
Once again, they are using this mainly to censor anti-Israel content. No one is mentionning this in the articles and comments.
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/
I’m not expert and I call BS. No need to be an expert for this hahaha
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
it was one of the last platform that allows significant criticism against ISrael without being censored, thats why.
Ah, but that's the thing. There are always new platforms.
The current winner seems to be a new one called Upscrolled.
The guy behind it is a Palestinian out of Jordan, with Australian citizenship?
Anyway, that's all I currently know about it, the app is being hugged to death by tens of thousands of new users over the last day or two.
Not Open Source…
It is considerably more open and build on open source technologies and they do want to become decentralized “once the open protocols mature (?)” but still, can someone educate the kids on software freedom please.
There is If a federated alternative: loops
Not "bugs"..."features."
I hope tik toc loses so many users it goes bankrupt
Sure. “Bug”. It’s just a way of them begging people to come back to their Zionist spyware bullshit.
By bugs they mean bending over backwards to please daddy.
You mean “experts” who have even the slightest understanding of how software works?
A bug right. Just EA is blocking/censoring the name as well.
So people are upset that they can't get the info or propaganda they want on tick tock...
Which tells me that these people think that tick tock is a reputable place to get this kind of information
I have heard more about this tick tock bullshit than I have heard about the ice bullshit today and that should say a lot about nature of our society here in America.
it was the only place to get actual unspun news about the genocide in gaza, which is so heavily censored in the west that a couple livestreams threatens the whole house of cards. obviously the chinese have their own censorship but if your in the west your trying to escape western propaganda not chinese propaganda
same reason why chinese kids flock to discord/other services. though from what i hear chinese doesn't really care so much if you know/speak about X internal-propaganda subject, just long as you don't "agitate" or try to orginize against it.