Have you faced censorship on TikTok? This is the dictatorship behind that social network

For years, TikTok has become a very popular social network, especially among young people. But is this network trustworthy?

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Counting Stars has channels on many social media platforms, but not on TikTok. The reason for this is that a communist dictatorship—the People's Republic of China—stands behind that social network. ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, is headquartered in Beijing. The company launched the social network Douyin in communist China in September 2016. Douyin is a heavily censored multimedia platform for short videos. In accordance with state directives, censorship on Douyin specifically suppresses all criticism of the Chinese regime and the Communist Party of China (CPC), the dictatorship's sole ruling party.

ByteDance launched TikTok in 2017 as an international version of Douyin. In fact, both social networks use the same logo. TikTok’s censorship policies are more lenient, which is why residents of communist China are not permitted to access it. Nevertheless, TikTok imposes politically motivated censorship on its users. As is the case with all Chinese companies, the CPC exerts strong control over TikTok; consequently, the platform has faced criticism and official investigations in the United States due to the risks it poses to national security. In 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) expressed concern regarding the national security risks posed by TikTok's operations in the U.S.

In addition to censoring content uncomfortable for that communist dictatorship, TikTok's algorithm also boosts content favorable to the Beijing regime, effectively acting as a massive propaganda outlet. The CCP's influence on TikTok has not only raised alarms in the United States. In 2022, Taiwan—Free China—banned TikTok on public-sector devices, classifying it as a product that endangers national information and communications security. In recent years, and for similar reasons, TikTok has been banned on government devices in Australia, Norway, the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Belgium, Denmark, and European Union institutions.

Despite all this, some people still insist on using the social network, believing it to be safe. Today, a Spanish media outlet is reporting on a complaint from a pro-Russian propagandist who accuses the European Union of censoring his TikTok channel. The accusation is amusing, considering that this censorship took place on a multimedia platform controlled by Communist China—an ally of Russia.

If anyone faces censorship of their videos or channel on that multimedia platform, it is not Brussels they should point the finger at, but Beijing—currently the capital of the world's largest dictatorship, an anti-democratic regime that holds over 1.4 billion people under its sway and has ruled mainland China since 1949 without free elections, violating the most basic fundamental rights, killing tens of millions of people, and using tools like TikTok to whitewash its horrific crimes.

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Photo: Xinhua. Image of the sixth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Beijing in November 2021.