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It hasn’t even been a full week since TikTok’s U.S. operations came under new management, and the app is already under fire with users claiming mass censorship.
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Monday night that he is launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by allegedly “censoring Trump-critical content.” Newsom made the announcement in a post on X, resharing a user’s claim that when they tried to send a direct message containing the name “Epstein,” it failed to go through because it may have violated TikTok’s community guidelines.
“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,” Newsom’s press office also posted on X. “Gavin Newsom is launching a review of this conduct and is calling on the California Department of Justice to determine whether it violates California law.”
The governor’s press office was referring to news announced last Thursday of a new joint venture that now oversees TikTok’s U.S. business, led by three managing investors who each hold a 15% stake. Those managing investors include Oracle, the tech giant founded by Trump ally Larry Ellison, as well as private equity firm Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi–based MGX.
“We don’t have rules against sharing the name ‘Epstein’ in direct messages and are investigating why some users are experiencing issues,” a TikTok U.S. spokesperson told NPR.
While the new TikTok joint venture did not immediately respond to a request for comment, it did post on X, claiming recent issues with the app stemmed from a power outage at a data center.
“We’re continuing to resolve a major infrastructure issue triggered by a power outage at one of our U.S. data center partner sites,” the statement read. “While the network has been recovered, the outage caused a cascading system failure that we’ve been working to resolve together with our data center partner.”
The statement went on to list issues users may experience, including slower load times and creators temporarily seeing zero views or likes on their videos.
That explanation came after multiple users reported issues that appeared to primarily affect political content on the platform.
A Georgetown law professor claimed in a Bluesky post on Sunday that a video he uploaded to TikTok criticizing the Department of Homeland Security had been “under review” for hours and still couldn’t be shared.
Other users reported having trouble uploading videos related to ICE protests, while still others said they noticed a sudden drop in political content on the app more broadly.
TikTok also experienced wider technical issues over the weekend, with Downdetector reporting more than 500,000 user reports between Sunday and Monday. Many of those complaints cited problems with the app’s functionality, including the For You page failing to refresh.
On Monday, CNBC reported that the number of U.S. users who were deleting the app had increased by 150 percent, according to Sensor Tower data.
The timing of the disruptions fueled rumors that the problems were tied to the new ownership of TikTok’s U.S. business.
In its announcement, the joint venture said its mandate was to “secure U.S. user data, apps and the algorithm through comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity measures,” adding that the algorithm would be retrained on U.S. user data and secured on Oracle servers.
Still, some lawmakers have suggested in the past that the years-long push to ban TikTok had less to do with national security and more to do with the kind of political content circulating on the platform.
At a forum in May 2024, then-Sen. Mitt Romney linked broad bipartisan support for banning TikTok unless it cut ties with China to concerns among lawmakers about pro-Palestinian content on the app.
Newsom wasn’t the only politician to call out TikTok more recently
“I know it’s hard to track all the threats to democracy out there right now, but this is at the top of the list,” Sen. Chris Murphy wrote in a post on X, referencing the alleged censorship.
Sen. Bernie Sanders said, in his post on Monday, that Ellison now controls the TikTok algorithm alongside media properties owned by Paramount, including CBS, MTV, and Nickelodeon.
“This is what Oligarchy looks like,” Sanders said.
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