ByteDance has recently censored all the content criticizing the Chinese government on news apps in Indonesia up until the middle of 2020, reports Reuters.
ByteDance purchased the Indonesian news aggregation app Baca Berita (BaBe) in 2018, after the country briefly banned the tech giant’s video-sharing platform TikTok. After ByteDance’s acquisition of BaBe, moderators for the app were instructed to take down content critical of the Chinese government. News that referenced the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 or Mao Zedong, founding father of the People’s Republic of China, was removed from the app, according to Reuters.
Responding to reports, a TikTok spokeperson said: “that its content and moderation policies are led by our US-based team and are not influenced by any foreign government. The Chinese government does not request that TikTok censor content, and would not have jurisdiction regardless, as TikTok does not operate there.”
TikTok’s statements didn’t assuage concerns from lawmakers like Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) that the increasingly popular social media platform didn’t censor content criticizing China.
Earlier this month President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning all transactions with ByteDance to address the national emergency with respect to the information and communication technology supply chain.
The order is expected to go into effect on September 20th.
