A new study reveals communist Chinese government-tied TikTok’s biased, anti-free speech manipulation of China content as the app faces a looming ban.
A U.S. federal government TikTok ban is set to take effect on Jan. 19, and TikTok is desperately trying to appeal to the Supreme Court and incoming president Donald Trump, but a new study illustrates again why the Chinese-tied app is a national security risk. Two centers at Rutgers University and the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) found that there is a “massive CCP propaganda bureaucracy devoted to controlling the flow of information in ways that threaten free speech and free inquiry.” The study is particularly interesting as TikTok makes its case to the Supreme Court Jan. 10.
The new study actually draws together information from three different studies, the first of which used newly-created accounts “to assess the nature and prevalence of content related to sensitive Chinese Communist Party (CCP) issues, specifically Tibet, Tiananmen Square [massacre], Uyghur rights, and Xinjiang [the area where the Uyghur genocide occurs].”
The CCP government owns a board seat and a financial stake in TikTok’s parent ByteDance.This reality is apparently reflected in TikTok’s algorithms.
The second study Rutgers and NCRI described examined the engagement of posts to determine whether platforms amplified or arbitrarily suppressed pro- and anti-CCP content. TikTok presented disproportionately high amounts of pro-CCP content, including in comparison to Meta’s Instagram and YouTube, despite anti-CCP content receiving more engagement.
The third study, meanwhile, polled over 1,200 Americans on their views about Communist China and their social media usage, revealing that TikTok users are more likely to be pro-CCP and pro-China in general than users of other platforms. This reinforces experts’ warnings about TikTok’s national security risks.
The looming U.S. TikTok ban follows years of accusations of biased censorship and national security threats. Yintao Yu, a former executive for ByteDance, alleged in a 2023 lawsuit that the CCP has backdoor access to TikTok user data.
Regarding mass censorship, as of Sept. 2022, MRC revealed that TikTok “permanently banned” 11 pro-free speech organizations. In 2023, MRC ranked TikTok among the worst censors of the year after it deleted hundreds of thousands of videos related to the ongoing Hamas-Israel conflict. The Chinese-owned app made the worst censors list again in 2024, after it targeted content critical of terrorist group Hamas and transgenders in women’s sports.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact TikTok via email at communitymanager@tiktok.com and demand Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment and provide transparency. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
