Chinese tech company ByteDance censors media criticizing the Chinese government over apps for news aggregation in Indonesia until mid-2020, Reuters reported Thursday.
In 2018, ByteDance bought the Indonesian news aggregation app Baca Berita (BaBe) after the country briefly banned the tech giant’s TigTok video sharing platform. Shortly after BaBe’s acquisition of ByteDance, moderators for the app were instructed to take down critical content from the Chinese government. News that referred to Tiananmen Square in 1989 as Mao Zedong, founding father of the People’s Republic of China, was removed from the app, according to Reuters.
“In our early days, before we could take the more localized approach we use today, BaBe had some moderation practices in place that were inconsistent with our philosophy to let the Indonesian team decide what was appropriate for its brand,” a BaBe spokesman said The edge Thursday. “These guidelines were replaced in 2019 and we have since built local moderation teams and made informed decisions that fit the local market.”
While the Reuters reporting only anti-China content censorship references on ByteDance’s news app, TikTok has come under fire in recent months for removing alleged videos that the Chinese government is wearing. In 2019, The guard reported that TikTok moderators were told to censor content citing Tiananmen Square, Tibetan Independence, and other similar videos.
In response to reports, TikTok said at the time that the “content and moderation policies are led by our US-based team and are not influenced by any foreign government.” A spokesman continued, “The Chinese government does not require TikTok to censor content, and would have no jurisdiction even though TikTok does not operate there.”
However, the statements of TikTok do not condemn concerns of legislators like Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) that the increasingly popular social media platform did not censor content with criticizing China. Rubio penned a letter to the Foreign Investment Commission requesting that it begin an investigation into the potential national security risks the app poses in the US.
Tensions escalated earlier this month when President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning all transactions with ByteDance to “tackle the national emergency task regarding the information and communications technology supply chain.” The order is expected to take effect on September 20.
Modified 8/13/20 at 13:32 ET: A statement added by BaBe.
