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Photographer: Ivan Abreu / Bloomberg
Photographer: Ivan Abreu / Bloomberg
The most popular Chinese-owned social networks, from WeChat to TikTok, are increasingly censoring content in the US and elsewhere, bringing practices honed over years behind the Great Firewall to an international audience.
ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok often buries or hides words that reflect political movements, gender, and sexual orientation or religion in most countries where it operates, the Australian Institute for Strategic Policy said in a report released Tuesday. Most of the censored content on WeChat supported pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, as well as messages from the US and UK embassies about a new National security law enacted by Beijing in late June that has sparked city-wide protests.
TikTok, which started out as a place where teens lip-synched to music, has grown into a forum for political protest, including the Black Lives Matter movement, said Fergus Ryan, one of the authors. Hashtags related to LGBTQ + topics were also suppressed in multiple languages, according to the report. Other topics censored in the past included criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The findings may lend ammunition to the Trump administration, which has banned TikTok and Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat after accusing the apps of giving in to Beijing’s will by censoring content, which could influence the November elections. While social media services like Facebook remove content like hate speech, Washington accuses services like TikTok of blocking content deemed sensitive to the Communist Party. WeChat has long complied with controls at home, while TikTok, which operates only outside of China, has rejected claims that it is influenced by the Chinese government.
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“TikTok is a more curated experience where the platform has a great deal of power to decide what content to serve until users, ”Ryan said. “Most of these hashtags are categorized in the TikTok code in the same way that terrorist groups, illicit substances and profanity are dealt with on the platform.”
A representative for Tencent declined to comment, while a spokesperson for ByteDance did not immediately comment when contacted. The Australian institute quoted TikTok as saying that some terms “were partially restricted due to relevant local laws.” He was also quoted as saying that he “strongly supports our LGBTQ creators around the world and takes pride that LGBTQ content is among the most popular category on the platform with billions of views.”
Washington’s moves against TikTok and WeChat underscore how the concept of an internet decoupling is becoming a reality. The Trump administration’s ban on TikTok and WeChat takes effect in mid-September, when both apps are likely to be pulled from app stores, but may still be accessible to many US users. WeChat can be a powerful vector in countries like the US, where the Chinese diaspora is sizeable, because it is often an important source of information for that population.
But principles such as free speech are not part of the core values of those apps, rather they are more likely to over-censor to align with the wishes of the local government, according to the report.
ByteDance is now embroiled in sensitive discussions about a TikTok acquisition in the US with suitors including Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp., a deal estimated to fetch more than $ 20 billion. But uncertainty around the deal increased dramatically last week after China asserted its right to approve or block the sale of technology abroad, complicating an already complex process that is under scrutiny by the White House. The law underscored that Beijing wants to maintain some control over content moderation and considers ByteDance’s algorithms to be a matter of state security, Ryan said.
“The rubber really kicks in with the algorithm,” he said. “The TikTok algorithms are extremely sophisticated and powerful.”
– With the help of Zheping Huang and Shiyin Chen
