NEW YORK, Jan 25 (Reuters) - U.S. TikTok users who once saw the app as a haven for free speech say they see signs of censorship after the platform, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, was revived by an executive order from President Donald Trump.
“Our policies and algorithms did not change over the weekend,” TikTok said in a statement to Reuters. “We are working hard to restore our U.S. operations back to normal and expect some temporary instability as we restore our services, which could impact TikTok features or users’ access to the app.”
But some users said they now see more content moderation, like limited search results, as well as warnings about misinformation and prompts for users to check their sources.
Some claimed TikTok was striking comments that used phrases like “Free Palestine” and “Free Luigi,” a reference to Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing a UnitedHealth executive, which had been previously allowed. TikTok said it does not allow content that promotes violent or hateful individuals on the platform.
It only felt different because the algorithm was also inactive while TT was down. It had to rebuild that algorithm, Mine was back to normal within a couple of hours.
Huh? “The algorithm” is just software. When you quit Excel and then later start Excel, it isn’t any different than it was before.
If it’s time based data, and new cell references refer to hours that have no global data, it could be affected.
Point being, what you say isn’t necessarily correct. We don’t know the inputs the the algorithm.