According to leaked documents detailing moderation guidelines, the popular Chinese-owned social network, TikTok, has been instructing its moderators to censor videos that mention Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence, or the banned religious group Falun Gong.
Searching the hashtag #TiananmenSquare on TikTok only shows about 20 videos, most of which joked that the bloody episode never happened. The hashtag refers to the 1989 bloody massacre where military forces killed thousands of people following pro-democracy protests, an event China strictly censors.
There is suspicion that the same is happening in response to the Hong Kong protests. If you search for Hong Kong on popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, you will find thousands of results documenting the ongoing clash in the city between protesters and their Chinese-backed counterparts. However, if you search #HongKong on TikTok, you're likely to see content more like this:
One way TikTok’s guidelines are being used to ban material is by allowing moderators to mark it as a “violation,” which sees it deleted from the site entirely. This can lead to a user being banned from the service. Videos that could be subjected to this include content that criticizes China’s socialist system, which comes under a general ban of “criticism/attack towards policies, social rules of any country, such as a constitutional monarchy, monarchy, parliamentary system, separation of powers, socialism system, etc.” Another ban covers “demonization or distortion of local or other countries’ history such as May 1998 riots of Indonesia, Cambodian genocide, Tiananmen Square incidents”.
Time to delete #TikTok! #bigbrotheriswatchingyou #china https://t.co/esyKAYeNFc
— Will Speak Up (@Willspeakup1) September 25, 2019
However, with its vague guidelines and little transparency, it’s impossible to know what videos are censored on TikTok. The company provides no information about the videos it removes for violating its prohibitions against hate speech or extremism, and it does not offer the kinds of tools that would make the platform accessible to outside research.
