Well, TikTok might have tried to export the censorship policies of China to other countries. Reportedly, documents show the company guidelines which instruct their moderators to censor content that mentions topics such as the 1989 massacre in 'Tiananmen Square' event.
TikTok's Censorship
Tiktok lists that massacre together with other political "incidents" in the past, such as the horrible Cambodian genocide and the 1998 Indonesia riots. They will not allow those topics to broach on the platform. Here is an example; there are the guidelines on the list of world leaders which the users cannot mention.
Tiktok would not delete the post outright. However, it will not lets the algorithm pick that post up.
In most of the case, the action the company would use against video about the censored topics would be to limit the post's visibility. Tiktok would not delete the post outright. However, it will not lets the algorithm pick that post up. However, some post about a really sensitive subject such as Falun Gong can lead to outright bans.
TikTok Said It Would Use A 'More-Localized' Approach
As for the company's side, the creator of TikTok - ByteDance told that it had retired these censor guidelines back in May. They said that in the early day of the platform, they had taken a rather blunt approach to control the conflict on their platform. They said that now they will use a more localized method with their content moderation, using region-specific policies and moderators.
ByteDance said that now they will use a more localized approach with their content moderation.
Chinese-Styled Censorship Is Spreading
However, it seems like TikTok still uses some type of censorship. Just in early September, The Washington Post's investigation found out that doing a search on TikTok about Hong Kong related videos will bring back very little mentions about the on-going protest for democracy. This is the newest example of how Chinese-styled censorship has been spreading around the world.
The Federal Trade Commission has sent warning letters to PayPal, Stripe, Visa, and Mastercard over concerns about debanking lawful businesses and consumers.