this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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TikTok claimed bugs blocked anti-ICE videos, Epstein mentions; experts call BS (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 days ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
63 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.”

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[–] rayyy@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Try UpScrolled. It ranks higher than TicToc and claims to be politically neutral.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

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.

[–] Zoot@reddthat.com 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Or Loops? The federated, no special interests version of TikTok. You're already on lemmy, why advocate for yet another corporate social media company?

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 3 points 23 hours ago

I like the idea of a federated version of that, but there are many problems:

  1. When people scroll, they need an algorithm to choose content for them.
  2. 99% of average TikTok content is low quality shit and it's the algorithm to find and promote what works
  3. All that 99% of shit is occupying exabytes on bytedance servers. Users are uploading terabytes of shit every hour, it's impossibile for a federated instance to keep all this shit on disk. Look how Lemmy is designed for example. I upload an image and then it's stored forever in hundreds of instances. For videos is untenable. Only companies that are profiting from this (for example using such videos for training ai models, or using this videos to hook people and serve them highly personalized ads) can host a TikTok clone