What can't you say on TikTok?

What can't you say on TikTok?

From Lock and Code by Malwarebytes

February 22, 2026 · 43 min · Season 7 · Episode 4

About this episode

The episode discusses allegations of censorship and manipulation on TikTok following its ownership change to American stewards.

A funny thing happened on TikTok last month, and its brought allegations of censorship, manipulation, and control. It was the week of January 22, and after a long legal battle, TikTok had finally—for the first time in its company history—moved its ownership to new, American stewards. But with the American restructuring,  TikTok users immediately reported that  something  had changed : videos would sometimes fail to record any views, and even direct messages would fail to send. But, according to user complaints, the flaws weren’t random. Instead, they befell users who spoke openly about topics that have become political lightning rods in the US, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the actions of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. To some aggrieved users, the flaws looked like censorship. But, according to TikTok, the error messages and missing video count tallies were part of a larger power outage. “Since yesterday we’ve been working to restore our services following a power outage at a US data center impacting TikTok and other apps we operate,”  TikTok wrote on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) . “We’re working with our data center…

People in this episode

Host: Malwarebytes

Topics covered

  • censorship
  • social media
  • TikTok
  • political issues
  • user experience
  • data privacy

Keywords

  • TikTok
  • censorship
  • social media
  • user complaints
  • data center
  • political topics

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: TikTok, Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Places: US

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