The Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has announced an investigation into claims TikTok has censored content which is critical of the Trump administration.
A deal was concluded last Thursday to split off the US operation of the app—three days later, thousands of American users began reporting problems, including seeing zero views on new posts.
Many also reported being unable to see political posts, such as content criticizing the shooting by federal agents of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday.
TikTok has not commented on accusations this is related to last week's deal, blaming user problems on a major infrastructure issue relating to a data center power outage.
However, Newsom's office states it has received confirmed reports of TikTok suppressing content critical of President Trump. 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 office declared.
Newsom would be launching a review of this content and probe whether the company had violated state laws. The California governor earlier declared it was time to investigate TikTok over censorship concerns.
His post linked to another X user's post containing a screenshot from TikTok, that appeared to show the video-sharing app flagging up a message when users tried to send content referencing certain topics.
Many users speculated that the issues they experienced, along with some political content not displaying in the app's For You feed or in search, might indicate censorship by TikTok's new US owners.
Celebrity voices have also raised similar alarms. Hacks actress Meg Stalter expressed her disillusionment on Instagram, stating she deleted her TikTok account because it felt like the app was under new ownership and we are being completely censored and monitored.
As reports of platform issues mounted throughout the outage over the weekend, Downdetector indicated it had received over 663,061 reports of problems from US users.
TikTok's US owner has acknowledged user frustrations, attributing the difficulties to multiple bugs, slower load times or timed-out requests stemming from an Oracle data center outage.
The situation highlights a growing concern over social media censorship amid changing ownership structures, especially regarding politically sensitive content.
