California Governor Gavin Newsom has publicly accused the social media giant TikTok of deliberately suppressing content that criticises former President Donald Trump. The Democratic governor has initiated a formal state review to determine whether the platform's content moderation practices potentially violate California law.
Allegations Follow Major Ownership Restructure
The serious accusation comes in the immediate wake of TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, finalising a landmark deal to establish a majority US-owned joint venture. This new corporate structure, designed to secure American user data and avert a potential nationwide ban on the popular short-video app, was notably praised by Mr Trump himself last week.
"Systems Failure" or Deliberate Suppression?
In a statement posted on social media platform X, Governor Newsom's office declared: "Following TikTok's sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports, and independently confirmed instances, of suppressed content critical of President Trump." The statement provided no specific examples but confirmed the launch of an official review.
TikTok has firmly rejected the allegations, attributing any user experience issues to a significant technical failure. A company representative pointed to a prior statement citing a data centre power outage as the root cause. "It would be inaccurate to report that this is anything but the technical issues we've transparently confirmed," the representative stated.
The joint venture entity, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, explained on X that the outage caused a "cascading systems failure" leading to bugs, slower load times, and timed-out requests for users attempting to post new content. This explanation was published before Governor Newsom levelled his accusations.
Scrutiny Amid National Security Concerns
This controversy represents another chapter in TikTok's long-running battle with US authorities over national security and data privacy concerns, an issue that persisted through both the Trump and Biden administrations. The newly finalised deal aims to directly address these fears by placing US user data, applications, and algorithms under enhanced protective measures within the joint venture.
Under the agreement's terms, American and global investors will collectively hold a controlling 80.1 per cent stake in the venture. ByteDance retains a minority 19.9 per cent share. Major managing investors include cloud computing leader Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment company MGX, each holding a 15 per cent stake. A White House official has confirmed that both US and Chinese governmental authorities approved the final agreement.
A History of Political Tension
The clash highlights the ongoing political friction between Governor Newsom, a prominent Democrat, and former President Trump, the Republican standard-bearer. Mr Trump, who boasts over 16 million followers on his personal TikTok account, has previously credited the platform with playing a significant role in his successful 2024 election campaign. The governor's move to investigate the platform injects a new layer of partisanship into the ongoing debate over social media regulation and free speech online.
