alt Hacker NewsTikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues
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Honestly I'm surprised people don't jump ship more often with social media platforms. With TikTok this is kind of new news, but there have been related problems with it that have been pretty obvious for some time.
The same with X and, before that, Facebook.
TikTok has never worked for me though so maybe there's no real equivalent alternative. Maybe time to make one if not?
To me it says something about the public, but I'm not sure what. I'm tempted to attribute it to indifference or complacency but I'm aware of network effects and the reality of alternatives.
Sometimes I feel like education and theory about security practices needs to extend beyond micro-level phenomena like passwords, to things like administrative conflicts of interest and strength in decentralization and competition. Private monopolies and quasi-monopolies aren't just economically bad, they're bad for privacy and security, and make the public vulnerable through lack of choice. In important ways it doesn't matter if it's the government or a private company; whenever power concentrates it is easier to align and abuse.
You elected yourself oligarchy. Good luck getting rid of it now.
It's kind of amazing that all the companies act in lockstep. Apple, Google, TikTok remove anti-ICE stuff, rightly or wrongly (I'll go with 'wrongly' because of freedom of speech/freedom of app choice, among other things)
They ALL do incredibly corrupt things
Just say no to any/all forms of corporate owned social media. They are toxic and antithetical to freedom of speech and true community building. Inevitably, all of them will eventually be used to disseminate propaganda.
What's disappointing is that this precise thing was happening during people trying to report on Gaza issues, and were encountering ghost "technical issues" and shadow bannings/outright bannings, but any such discussion about it here seemed to be getting flagged.
What happens if the creators load the video first with a different title and different contextual information, then if the video gets loaded, they change the title and the content afterwards?
See also re: censorship of messages containing the word Epstein: https://xcancel.com/krassenstein/status/2015911471507530219
Per https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5689104/tiktok-epstein-... :
> "We don't have rules against sharing the name 'Epstein' in direct messages and are investigating why some users are experiencing issues," a spokesman for TikTok's U.S. operation told NPR in a statement.
But the evidence in that Twitter thread should be weighed against the spokesperson's statement.
You also can't talk about Epstein apparently.
Glowing endorsement for the Oracle investment
Surprisingly convenient accident that happened miraculously just a few days after ownership transfer to the US owners.
what a bunch of enormous pussies ICE are, to have tiktok do this... lol, they're children, man. children with guns.
Some guys from the other French thread will tell me that government should legislate social networks.. yeah, sure bud.
Meta comment: it seems like you can only voice a particular direction on the politic topic of immigration enforcement on this thread without getting downvoted. The opinion is obvious because everyone automatically jumps to malice as opposed to incompetence as the prevailing theory for the article's claim.
I had a condescending response from a HN mod the other day telling me that HN isn't all that left wing, just a 'slight skew'. Well OK buddy, exhibit A, read through the diversity of opinions that aren't flagged in this thread. I'd go as far to say that HN is basically like Reddit, except more of you happen to have computer science degrees.
And that's fine, it is what it is, but let's not pretend this website doesn't have a heavy bias in a particular direction.
I believe everyone here realizes there are several highly used media platforms (some bigger than TikTok, like Instagram), that are posting the videos without any issues. You also realize that there are US TV stations playing those videos almost non-stop, right?
People laugh at MAGA conspiration theories backed by Fox News, but their conpiration theories - backed by CNN - sound just as insane for anyone that didn't buy into any of the 2 extremes...
I hope for the good of mankind, all sides of politics unite against deplatforming and oppressing opposing viewpoints.
It's sad that certain topics (anti-ICE, Epstein) neutered on a social media platform, but this went on for years when the politics were reversed.
Let everyone have their say, I say.
There have been a number of fake AI-generated videos of police confronting ICE officers lately:
https://gothamist.com/news/ai-videos-of-fake-nypdice-clashes...
I suspect these are some of those that have been banned from TikTok, and there's probably heightened moderation around this content at the moment since people are sharing AI-generated propaganda and riling others into violent confrontation with ICE.
well… i submitted it as https://lite.cnn.com/2026/01/26/tech/tiktok-ice-censorship-g... but i guess HN drops the lite off of it? le sigh, here’s hoping someone can frontpage one of these tiktok censorship stories today…?
Lmao, I know that 2020 Trump was the first to brought up banning TikTok but it was Biden and Democrat who were vigorous in "controlling" TikTok.
Worthy for fell for it again award.
If there's a flash of light and a town in North Korea suddenly vanishes and becomes a giant crater, and the North Korean government claims it was a natural disaster, I'm going to guess they accidentally nuked themselves.
If TikTok suddenly blocks videos on a topic, and they say it was "technical issues", I'm going to guess the new US overlords accidentally pressed the wrong button.
Wonder how long before that button comes for HN. If Dang starts talking like ChatGPT we'll all know.
Not just anti ICE videos - you can’t even mention Epstein
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/tiktok-epstein-trump-cens...
And HN users can’t upload anti-ICE articles or discuss politics without getting flagged and downvoted.
So I guess HN was just ahead of the curve.
On Twitter, there's a bunch of reports that TikTok suddenly prevents people from sending the word "Epstein" in DMs [1].
I had expected an Orbanisation (aka, what happened to the media sphere in Hungary after Orban took over and his cronies bought up almost all media) of Tiktok, but not that fast, it's like less than a week after the deal [2].
Scary shit if you ask me, and it's made scarier by the fact that Tiktok has already been changing the way our youth speaks due to evading censorship (e.g. "graped" instead of "raped", "unalived" instead of kill/murder/execute/suicide).
[1] https://x.com/krassenstein/status/2015911471507530219
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/23/heres-whats-you-should-kno...
I predict a future showdown over Section 230 because "algorithms" are used to cheat on the safe harbor protections. Let me explain.
The general principle of Section 230 is that a platform provider isn't generally liable for user generated content. This was a key piece of legislation that enabled forums, Reddit and ultimately social media. The platform provider does have responsibilities like moderating illegal content and responding to legal takedowns, etc.
Alternatively if you produce and publish your own content you are legally liable. You can be sued for defamation, etc in a way that you can't if you simply host user generated content (unless you fail to adequately moderate).
REcommendation algorithms (including news feeds) effectively allow a platform provider to select what content gets distributed and what doesn't. All algorithms express biases and goals of humans who create those algorithms. It's not a black box. It is a reflection of the company's goals.
So if you wanted to produce content that's, for example, only flattering to the administration even if you outright lie, you can be sued. But what if your users produce any content you want but you only distribute content that is favorable to the administration? At the same time, you suppress anti-administration content and content creators. It's the same end result but the latter has Section 230 protections. And it really shouldn't.
This isn't hypothetical. The Biden administration revived the dead Trump 1 Tiktok ban to suppress anti-Israel content [1][2][3].
What I find most funny about all this is that the American administration--both parties--are doing the exact thing they accuse China is possibly doing in the future.
[1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/tiktok-faces-renew...
[2]: https://www.internetgovernance.org/2024/03/18/yes-its-a-ban-...
Sure, 'technical issues'. Just like the filtering around epstein, mussad, etc. Right-wing billionaires like to ensure the speech matches their preferences.
I really want to know which directions data is flowing. How much of an island is Elli-Tok? Do videos from the US appear internationally? International to US? ByteDance famously isn't giving up the algorithm, but what user data does Elli-Tok get and what do they send, or does Elli-Tok have to totally rebuild the algorithm from scratch using only US viewers?
This whole thing is such a shit show. The US government right now looks like a total ass of all asses on the world stage, but this TikTok business of the US demanding our country get to take over a social network preceeds this era of major fuckery by a good tick. And is just so stupid, so not what governments should do. Even if we hadn't had Trump just hand it over to his preferred "buyers" the Ellison's, it's just a grade a fuckup, absolute bedlam to do this, completely delegitmizes the US.
TikTok v. Garland and the First Amendment Anticanon paper by Evelyn Douek just came out, talking to what a first class First Amendment fuck up the unanimous Supreme Court decision was. Excellent read. Just could not have done a worst job, unbelievable nonsense that let this madness just persist & amplify. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6118706
The purchase of TikTok is interesting. Ellison is first and foremost pro Trump, and pro-Israel. TikTok was one of the few companies that allowed videos against the status quo (the propaganda our media pushes), which has only grown more biased now that Bari Weiss (again, a Pro Trump, pro Israel shill) is heading a large media organization. Censorship and controlling the media is one of the first tenets of bad actors. By controlling the flow of information, the truth can be obfuscated (that is why for instance, Israel has a total ban on covering Ghaza for western media. So that war crimes can go unnoticed, and thereby, it is as if they never occured). If we do not share anti-Ice videos, then they simply do not occur. For is the truth really factual, if it is left in darkness. A war on facts is concerning. I see videos of Mr Preti in drag on my feeds, clearly generated by AI, and shared by boomers. Disparaging the dead and the war on facts is highly concerning. That is why Noem does not release body cam footage of the ICE execution of Good and Preti. The only comfort I can find is that Noem and Ellison, and the Trump admin and Israel, are just plain bad at their job. Many years ago, Ellison was well known in SV circles to badly desire to be called like Jobs, in an almost comical way, like a kid asking his parents whether he is like that wrestler he saw on TV when he imitated one of his moves (he used to dress like him, and ask anyone around at his parties about the similarities between the two). They still miserably fail at controlling public sentiment, which is only growing against them day by day, as it rightfully should. Whether or not that leads to a tangible action against these bad actors is to be waited for. Rarely does anything happen though. The war criminals that lied and killed civilians in Vietnam and Iraq enjoyed their ranches. Netanyahu and trump will someday retire and enjoy their old days, after wrecking havoc on the innocent.
When you force the sale of a company in order to control the political messages that its users post, the wailing and gnashing of teeth that comes when that power is exercised is entirely performative.
Weren't anti-ICE people just calling it "freeze peach" a minute ago? This is what that looks like. This is the group that repeated "nothingburger" over and over again when you said that government directly and publicly threatening private businesses if they didn't censor individuals was bad.
This is political. The Democrats began their open hatred of the left in the 90s when the Democrats cracked down on free speech during the anti-globalization protests (the introduction of fenced-in "free speech zones"), the party went all in on Iraq against the wishes of all people who were paying attention, Hillary Clinton mocked the left for objecting to a wall between Mexico and the United States, and Rahm Emanuel described people who wanted single-payer as "fucking retards."
Now the bizarre group of media-addicted partisans that now calls themselves the "left" fight for free trade and imported slave labor. They remind you that there are jobs that are too awful for Americans that are totally appropriate for Mexicans. That manufacturing is actually worthless, and we should import everything because as a reserve currency there's no need to produce anything. Trade deficits can be infinite, and America is meant to be a black hole, sucking in the worlds production and handing it to the rich. But the rich are bad, although we're giving them every single thing they want. Their politics judged on policy are to the right of Nixon. The only illegal immigrants they know are their employees. They've left behind Floyd, Illegal is the new Black.
Now, on HN, this isn't politics. This is something else. Only black people and women are politics. The creation of a masked, militarized federal police force filled with morons to enforce federal immigration law because Democratic cities and states are refusing to enforce it themselves? Not politics. The performance of Trump's street roundups to rally his base (and the working people in this country that are undercut by illegal labor, and the racists who think every Mexican is a rapist) while ignoring and writing exceptions for the corporations that employ illegal labor? Not politics.
Sorry, I meant something something something Russia, China, Iran, Nazis. And some specious, offensive comparison of people who just got here in order to make money to Black Americans enslaved and segregated over centuries.
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And yet "intellectuals" and "enlightened" people in "the West" still seem to think that "glorious socialism" will save civilization from the "evil capitalists"
https://museumofcommunistterror.com/
https://museumofcommunistterror.com/importing-class-war-the-...
https://museumofcommunistterror.com/even_the_grass_was_bourg...
https://museumofcommunistterror.com/what-millenials-should-k...
Ironically, CNN's "agenda" is part of the "problem" here as well: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left/cnn-bias/
"let's make people really upset about ICE so that we can help usher in the glorious utopia of socialism!"
Classic big. You just have to set the MANIPULATE env var to false in the container. It's true by default.