Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announced on Monday that he is investigating whether TikTok is violating California law by allegedly censoring content critical of President Donald Trump.
Newsom is also urging the state’s Justice Department to probe the allegations. He highlighted an apparent TikTok user who seemed to be stymied by the platform’s community guidelines policies when she tried to search “Epstein,” a reference to the deceased sex offender. Others, ranging from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) to singer Billie Eilish, have also raised concerns this week that the platform is blacklisting posts questioning Trump and controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement shootings in Minnesota.
“Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports — and independently confirmed instances — of suppressed content critical of President Trump,” the governor’s office said in a statement to X.
The social media platform has pushed back against accusations of censorship, attributing issues to technical difficulties it has experienced due to power outages. And TikTok is investigating why users appear to be experiencing issues when sharing the name “Epstein” in direct messages, telling NPR it doesn’t have any rules against sharing that word.
“It would be inaccurate to report that this is anything but the technical issues we’ve transparently confirmed,” a spokesperson for TikTok told Reuters.
TikTok closed a $14 billion deal last week that handed over control of U.S. operations to domestic investors. The development allowed TikTok to avoid a ban in the United States if the social media platform didn’t divest from its Chinese owner, ByteDance.
The platform’s U.S. subsidiary is now run by TikTok U.S. Data Security Joint Venture LLC, a group of primarily Trump-backed investors, including Oracle’s Larry Ellison.
The new U.S.-run platform has announced some glitches in its first week of operations. On Monday, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC warned users that they could experience zero views or likes on videos, slower load times, and timed-out requests due to a power outage at a data center site.
Under the new deal, TikTok is also retraining its algorithms for national security purposes, meaning U.S. users’ experience will be different than when the social media platform was fully under Chinese control. Videos served to their feeds could shift as the new ownership group takes control.
“The Joint Venture will retrain, test, and update the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data. The content recommendation algorithm will be secured in Oracle’s U.S. cloud environment,” TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC said in a press release announcing the deal. “The majority American-owned Joint Venture will operate under defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurances for U.S. users.”
SENATE DEMOCRATS GEAR UP TO DERAIL APPROPRIATIONS PASSAGE AFTER FATAL SHOOTING IN MINNEAPOLIS
“The U.S. company will have control over how the algorithm pushes content to users, and that was a very important part of it,” Vice President JD Vance said last September when the initial deal was approved by the U.S. “We thought it was necessary for the national security level element of the law.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to TikTok for comment.