I feel like this is an incredibly obvious yes. They were down for 12 hours. They put Trump's name as their savior in the error message... Then the CEO shows up to his inauguration. Trump freely admits that it is because he believes TikTok helped him win the election:
“I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points,” Trump said in December. “And there are those that say TikTok had something to do with that.”
So. Yeah. Of fucking course it was. Fuck national security and all that nonsense, ME ME ME!
I was thinking the same, I'm 99% certain Trump required his name to be included in the welcome back message as a condition for not implementing the ban.
Some Tik Tok creators are complaining on the platform that they are being censored, specifically in regards to talking poorly about the Trump administration.
As much as some people harp on Tik Tok being a bastion of non-censorship, it has been proven repeatedly that this is not actually true. They just pick and choose carefully what to censor and when. Most platforms do that. It's not surprising. It also wouldn't be surprising for them to not promote or prioritize content with their algorithm that could be seen by the current POTUS as inflammatory because they are attempting to gain favor with him at the moment in exchange for potential political favors in regards to the platform in the future.
Oh. I see. Sorry. I didn't understand. Inside the house means the claims are originating directly from users of Tik Tok on the Tik Tok platform. There was an old horror movie about a babysitter getting prank calls about the children in the house being in danger. It turned out the calls were coming from inside the house.
It said that unless the government immediately stepped in to assure the video app it would not be punished for violating the looming ban, it would be "forced to go dark on January 19".<<