TikTok’s transformation under US ownership is reshaping it into a platform for censorship, AI exploitation and political influence, undermining free expression.
Remember all the hyped-up, over-the-top warnings by US politicians and pundits about the dangers posed by TikTok owned by a Chinese company? It turns out they are now doing all those terrible things and adding some threatening extras just for its American users. Who would have guessed?
In one of her latest clips, influential commentator Angela Baker of Parkrose Permaculture, who has close to half a million YouTube subscribers, complained about her TikTok experience since joining it in April 2024. “I’ve watched the platform change radically between then and now. What originally felt like a space where we were having conversations between creators. It felt productive. It felt like a community,” she said.
“It just felt positive. I felt like I was learning a lot. I was being exposed to different ideas and folks who had a really different background and lived experience than me. It felt like an enriching space. Yeah, there were silly dance videos and memes and what have you, but there were real conversations happening, real community, real education happening in that space. It’s no longer like that.”
Sensitive subjects are now heavily censored or demonetised. Politically incorrect influencers are deplatformed or demoted by TikTok’s new algorithm.
Baker said her videos repeatedly “get hit with the most bizarre community guidelines violations just for reading the headlines from CNN and the Guardian. My account got labelled for putting out terroristic threats”. Her claims are supported by other reports dating back to last year; the situation has only worsened.
According to Harvard Independent, “Critics have warned that signs of [Donald] Trump’s growing ties to TikTok’s leadership … could allude to potential government consolidation of control over online content. If political figures like Trump gain unchecked influence over what information remains visible on major platforms, ‘the very foundation of democracy is at risk’.”
In another report by The Wellesley News, “it is widely noted that content moderation may already be occurring. Users have reported limited search results and the removal of comments using phrases that were allowed before – including words related to current activism movements and political discourse, like ‘Free Palestine’.
“Regardless of its relation to Trump, this content moderation is deeply concerning, as it casts a shadow over the essence of free expression that social media platforms like TikTok are intended to promote.”
At their most idealistic, some theorists claim that social media could function as civic spaces for people to share different ideas, hobbies and viewpoints, and form groups and associations, the 21st century version of what Alexis de Tocqueville called civic associations in Democracy in America. People there could build and maintain social bonds, which Tocqueville theorised to be a key but informal pillar of American democracy. America today, though, is hardly a functioning democracy, but more like a disguised corporate oligarchy.
For a time, especially during the most intense period of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, younger Americans were using it to spread anti-establishment ideas, from questioning legalised corporate corruption to repudiating Washington’s support for the Jewish state.
Speaking before a group of American-Jewish and pro-Israel social media influencers in a meeting last September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t mince words about weaponising TikTok and social media. “We are going to have to use the tools of battle,” he said. “The weapons change over time and the most important ones are the social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is? Class? TikTok. Number one. Number one. And I hope it goes through.”
He was referring to the eventual forced sale of TikTok by Chinese parent ByteDance to a Washington-approved consortium which included Oracle, controlled by pro-Israeli billionaire Larry Ellison, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX as well as Ellison’s fellow billionaires Rupert Murdoch and Michael Dell.
That was the real threat of a Chinese-owned TikTok: it was ironically too free and uncontrolled. This is why its US owners are now completely redesigning it to reshape public opinion and exploit creators’ content for their own artificial intelligence (AI).
If the outright censorship is obvious, the AI-appropriation of creator content has been far more insidious. Almost immediately after the sale, TikTok automatically opted in every video clip to allow its AI to access and use their content. But since its new AI protocol is opaque, users have no idea what their content is being used for, yet find it extremely difficult to disable the feature.
As one TikTok user observed, “This [AI] feature had been rolled out in secret. It was turned on for every video, and there was no master switch to turn it off. In order to opt out of this feature, I would have to go through all of the 2,800 videos I’ve posted to the app since 2019 … This seemed to be the point – make it prohibitively difficult to opt out.”
The unbelievable amount of content available on TikTok means it is among the world’s largest learning laboratories for AI training.
“They’re going to grab as much content as they can … to teach AI not just how to sell you stuff,” another TikTok influencer said. “They want to teach AI what makes you watch, what makes you stay, what makes you happy, what makes you sad, what makes you mad, what makes you active politically or socially, what makes you inactive politically or socially.”
The next step, she warns, is “to keep us viewing and how to be able to manipulate us without there being any humans in the equation.”
Meanwhile, many content creators have reported a drastic drop in their earnings, thus forcing even previously high earners, relatively speaking, into the highly exploitative gig economy. Baker said she used to earn thousands a month from TikTok. “Four months ago, I was making US$65 a month. This past month, I made US$21,” she said.
Who would have guessed that Chinese communists – out to innovate and to make a buck like good capitalists – inadvertently created an online democratic marketplace in the US that proved too threatening to the American oligarchy – the so-called Epstein class – such that the platform needed to be either banned or forcibly taken over?
Republished from South China Morning Post, 26 April 2026
Alex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.