By Choekyi Lhamo
DHARAMSHALA, Aug. 24: The Chinese social media company TikTok’s English language news app, News Republic has reportedly censored stories concerning Tibet and the Dalai Lama; both are recognized as sensitive topics by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). An anonymous source told The Telegraph that the news company had “a blacklist of topics that its algorithmic news aggregator was prohibited from sharing.”
News Republic app was downloaded by 5 million people in the US and UK from its inception in 2014. It uses an algorithm to display headlines on the basis of users’ interests. The famous news app was founded in France and eventually bought by Bytedance, TikTok’s parent company for $86m in 2017.
The news company filters tens of thousands of news stories every day to weed out slang and offensive language, but was told to add phrases like “freedom of press”, “Tibet” and “Dalai Lama” by one of the company’s previous owners, Cheetah Mobile. TikTok did not confirm whether it had blacklisted specific terms when it bought the News Republic which partnered with international news organizations including Sky, The Telegraph, The Guardian, BBC, CNN, and USA Today.
It also admitted to censoring TikTok videos that were sensitive to the Beijing administration. The Guardian broke the story in September on how the company’s policy was to censor videos that mentioned Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence and Falun Gong practitioners until May; it has since changed this policy.
A Bytedance spokesman said, “The period in question was prior to our acquisition of News Republic from Cheetah Mobile, and the alleged policies do not in any way reflect those after the acquisition.” The US continues to claim that Bytedance, Huawei and other Chinese companies in the country pose a national security risk since China introduced a law in 2017 which compels the companies to work with CCP’s intelligence.
US President Donald Trump signed two executive orders prohibiting U.S. residents from doing business with the Chinese-owned TikTok and WeChat apps earlier this month. Meanwhile, Bytedance confirmed its plans to file a lawsuit in retaliation on Saturday. The Indian government banned 59 Chinese Apps including the popular Tik Tok and We Chat amid a military standoff at the LAC in Ladakh near the Indo-Tibet border in June.
