California Governor Accuses TikTok of Intentionally 'Cleansing' Anti-Trump Content, Massive Investigation Begins!

JAKARTA - Escalation of tensions between the California state government and the giant platform TikTok reached a boiling point. Governor Gavin Newsom officially launched an in-depth review of TikTok's content moderation practices.

This was done after serious allegations emerged that the platform was deliberately suppressing or censoring content critical of President Donald Trump. This move sparked a heated debate about algorithmic neutrality under new ownership affiliated with the Trump camp.

The allegations exploded just days after the Chinese owner of TikTok, ByteDance, sealed a deal to form a majority-owned US joint venture to avoid a total block in the country.

"Following the sale of TikTok to a business group aligned with Trump, our office has received reports, and independently confirmed, of instances of critical content against President Trump being suppressed," a statement from Newsom's office said on Monday.

Newsom is not messing around. He has called on the California Department of Justice to investigate whether TikTok's actions violate California state law. Although TikTok argues that the system failure is purely due to a technical problem in the form of an electrical outage in their data center, Newsom remains suspicious of political motives behind the "loss" of critical content.

TikTok through its new joint venture in the US confirmed that users may experience bugs, slow loading times, or interrupted requests when uploading new content simply due to cascading systems failure.

However, the testimony of experts and academics clouded the atmosphere. Steve Vladeck, a law professor from Georgetown University, reported that the video he made on the sensitive issue of the authority of federal immigration officers was suddenly put in a "under review" status.

A similar point was made by Casey Fiesler, a technology ethics expert from the University of Colorado, who stated that it was not surprising that a significant crisis of confidence in TikTok's new ownership emerged, especially after he himself had difficulty uploading videos related to the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.

The TikTok deal, which Trump praised, is indeed a new milestone, where cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX now hold a total of 80.1% of the shares in the joint venture.

Trump, who has more than 16 million followers and acknowledges TikTok played a big role in his 2024 election victory, is now in the middle of a swirl of algorithm privilege allegations. With an ongoing investigation in California, the future of free speech on a platform used by 200 million Americans is now under the tight scrutiny of state law.