California's Newsom accuses TikTok of suppressing content critical of Trump

WASHINGTON: California Governor Gavin Newsom accused TikTok on Monday of suppressing content critical of President Donald Trump as he launched a review to decide if its content moderation practices violated state law, while the platform cited a systems failure.

AI Brief

California Governor Gavin Newsom is investigating reports that TikTok suppressed content critical of Trump following its sale to a US-aligned group.
TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance created a majority US-owned joint venture to protect American user data and prevent a nationwide ban.
The new venture, holding 80.1% US and global investor ownership, has approval from both US and Chinese governments and involves Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX.

Newsom's statement came after TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, last week finalized a deal to set up a majority U.S.-owned joint venture that will secure U.S. data, to avert a ban on the short video app used by more than 200 million Americans.

ByteDance said TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC would secure U.S. user data, apps and algorithms through data privacy and cybersecurity measures, in a deal praised by 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 said on X, without elaborating.

"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," it added.

In response, a TikTok representative pointed to a prior statement that blamed a data center power outage, adding, "It would be inaccurate to report that this is anything but the technical issues we've transparently confirmed."

Users may notice bugs, slower load times or timed-out requests when posting new content due to the impact of the outage, the joint venture added.

"While the network has been recovered, the outage caused a cascading systems failure that we've been working to resolve," it said in the statement on X posted before Newsom's remarks.

Last week's deal was a milestone for TikTok after years of battles with the U.S. government over Washington's concerns about risks to national security and privacy under Trump and former President Joe Biden.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Newsom, a Democrat, and Trump, a Republican, have long been critical of each other.

With more than 16 million followers on his personal TikTok account, Trump credited the app with helping him win the 2024 election.

The deal provides for American and global investors to hold 80.1% of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9%.

Each of the joint venture's three managing investors, cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX, will hold a stake of 15%.

The U.S. and Chinese governments had signed off on the deal, a White House official said.