Even with the United States (US) President Donald Trump bad-mouthing China these days, it looks like the red giant is still looking out for their old ‘pal’. Apparently, social media app TikTok, which is owned by a private Chinese company, is under fire for sweeping ‘Black Lives Matter’ videos under the rug.
TikTok is being slammed for trying to censor TikTok videos related to George Floyd. Many folks reported that their videos about Black Lives Matter movement were hard to find on the social media platform.
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What happened?
Initially, the #blacklivesmatter hashtag surged to a top spot on TikTok, with related videos getting over six billion views in recent days. After a certain amount of days, black creators noticed that videos tagged #GeorgeFloyd or #BlackLivesMatter were getting hard to find.
How does a top trend go hush as protests continue along with social media activism? Were these videos quietly demoted, or shadow-banned?
The Chinese video-sharing platform was called out on this. They explained that this happened due to a ‘technical glitch’. They even apologized but users aren’t buying it.
“We acknowledge and apologize to our Black creators and community who have felt unsafe, unsupported, or suppressed. We don’t ever want anyone to feel that way. We welcome the voices of the Black community wholeheartedly.”
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China has a reputation when it comes to censorship. Remember that make-up tutorial with a hidden message about Uyghur Muslims? And the anti-Beijing protests in Hong Kong? People are not convinced.
All this begs the question. Why would China try to hush a crisis for the US government? They haven’t been the best of friends as of late. Observers say that TikTok has a reputation as a ‘fun and lively’ platform, and that they’d rather keep serious political discourse of the the platform via curation.
