Buck­le Up: CCP-Tied Tik­Tok Announces ‘Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ries’ Coun­terof­fen­sive

Com­mu­nist Chi­nese gov­ern­ment-tied Tik­Tok is dou­bling down on elec­tion-inter­fer­ing cen­sor­ship even as it faces a poten­tial U.S. ban.
Pres­i­dent Joe Biden signed into law a Repub­li­can-led bill that could force TikTok’s Chi­nese par­ent com­pa­ny ByteDance to sell the app or have it banned in Amer­i­ca. Tik­Tok came under fire for a March update to its “For You feed Eli­gi­bil­i­ty Stan­dards,” where the app announced its deter­mi­na­tion to cen­sor alleged “mis­in­for­ma­tion,” “con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries” and “false or mis­lead­ing” elec­tion con­tent. This could con­sti­tute for­eign elec­tion inter­fer­ence ahead of the 2024 elec­tion, as the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (CCP) owns a board seat and main­tains a finan­cial stake in TikTok’s par­ent com­pa­ny ByteDance.
TikTok’s update to its “Stan­dards” details the alleged “Mis­in­for­ma­tion” it bans specif­i­cal­ly for the “For You” feed, includ­ing “Gen­er­al con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that are unfound­ed and claim that cer­tain events or sit­u­a­tions are car­ried out by covert or pow­er­ful groups, such as ‘the gov­ern­ment’ o …