The Disastrous Rollout of the Trump-Approved TikTok Serves as a Stark Warning for Us All
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Late last month, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, finalized a deal to spin off the platform’s US operations into a new, majority US-owned company.
Within 48 hours of the takeover, users began to experience problems. Many top creators saw their reach plummet and reported that their videos related to controversial topics like criticizing ICE and advocating for Palestine were being throttled by the algorithm. Some US users could not type the word “Epstein” in direct messages. Bisan Owda, an award-winning Gaza-based journalist, reported that her account was banned, prompting outcry.
TikTok said most of these issues were attributable to a data center power outage, and that the Epstein problem was a technical glitch. The company also said that Owda’s account was flagged due to an impersonation issue from last September, which has since been resolved. The account is back up.
Amidst this chaos, however, a clip of Adam Presser, TikTok US’s new CEO, speaking at an event organized by the World Jewish Congress last year, began to spread. He spoke about the platform’s moderation policies, saying, “We made a change to designate the use of the term ‘Zionist’ as a proxy for a protected attribute as hate speech. So if somebody were to use ‘Zionist,’ of course, you can use it in that sense, you’re a proud Zionist, but if you’re using it in a context degrading someone, calling somebody a Zionist as a dirty name, then that gets designated as hate speech to be moderated against.”
Presser added that in 2024, the platform tripled the number of accounts it banned for “hateful activity.” He also said that over two dozen Jewish organizations “are constantly feeding us intelligence and information when they spot violative trends.” The rules around the term Zionist predate Presser’s role, but the incident shows how a lack of transparency on moderation decisions can lead to widespread distrust and confusion.
And it’s not just TikTok.
