‘Propaganda arm’: TikTok search glitch stokes fear over Trump’s new alliance with tech titans
Users on TikTok said they have been unable to access search results for terms including "Donald Trump rigged election" in the wake of the president's inauguration yesterday.
Instead, they were met with a sad robot face and a message reading “No results found."
Users were also warned that such phrases “may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines."
The pop-up comes following negotiations to revive access to the app, which was briefly blocked this weekend as a ban loomed.
Following the reinstatement, U.S. TikTok users were greeted with a message thanking President Donald Trump for his “efforts,” which included an executive order promising companies wouldn't be punished for not enforcing the ban.
And that left users speculating that the censorship of Trump-specific terms was tied to the app and the president's new closeness.
On TikTok, one user posted a video of the “no results found” page for “Donald Trump Rigged Election,” captioning it: “And here we have it folks. Confirmation that TikTok has changed. Censorship at its finest. This should concern you whether you voted for him or not.”
On X, one person pointed out the region-specific nature of this censorship, with U.K. TikTok accounts able to access “Donald Trump rigged election” search results.
As TikTok users tried their own searches and were met with similar restrictions, they accused the app of becoming “Trump's propaganda arm.”
A TikTok spokesperson told the Daily Dot that no policy had been implemented and that given the difficulties in shutting off and restoring access to U.S. users, hiccups could occur in the app's functions.
But TikTok isn't the only app that seemed to have political issues during the inauguration. On Instagram, users reported the hashtag #democrat was blocked.
Unlike the alleged TikTok censorship, #Democrat was apparently censored for users beyond the U.S., with Instagramers in Indonesia and India also reporting search results that were blocked
Other terms, including DNC, appeared blocked, while terms like RNC were not.
Meta addressed the alleged censoring of Democrat-related phrases in a statement to the BBC.
“We're aware of an error affecting hashtags across the political spectrum and we are working quickly to resolve it," the company said.
Meta recently undertook several rightward changes to its platforms and company, including winding down its DEI policies, ridding itself of fact-checkers, and expanding its community guidelines to allow for statements calling LGBTQ+ people mentally ill.
But whether the issues were merely technical, they nevertheless increased fears around Trump's newfound alliance with tech titans.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok's CEO Shou ZI Chew both attended the inauguration, alongside former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, the first tech boss to hitch his wagon to Trump.
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