# What can't you say on TikTok?

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lock-and-code-112850/what-can-t-you-say-on-tiktok
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/lock-and-code-112850/what-can-t-you-say-on-tiktok.md
Podcast: [Lock and Code](https://stenobird.com/podcast/lock-and-code-112850)
Published: 2026-02-22T19:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://lock-and-code.captivate.fm/episode/what-cant-you-say-on-tiktok
Audio file: https://episodes.captivate.fm/episode/32733a6c-8aee-4b74-a706-1f1ff6b75bb0.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/lock-and-code-112850/episodes/what-can-t-you-say-on-tiktok
Duration seconds: 2582

## Resource

A funny thing happened on TikTok last month, and its brought allegations of censorship, manipulation, and control. It was the week of January 22, and after a long legal battle, TikTok had finally—for the first time in its company history—moved its ownership to new, American stewards. But with the American restructuring,  TikTok users immediately reported that  something  had changed : videos would sometimes fail to record any views, and even direct messages would fail to send. But, according to user complaints, the flaws weren’t random. Instead, they befell users who spoke openly about topics that have become political lightning rods in the US, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the actions of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. To some aggrieved users, the flaws looked like censorship. But, according to TikTok, the error messages and missing video count tallies were part of a larger power outage. “Since yesterday we’ve been working to restore our services following a power outage at a US data center impacting TikTok and other apps we operate,”  TikTok wrote on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) . “We’re working with our data center partner to stabilize our service. We’re sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon.” While TikTok has reportedly more than 200 million users in the US alone, it’s far from a universal app. But the changes made to TikTok hint at a bigger sea change in social media and the internet today, in which online spaces are increasingly being altered, shut down, or even controlled—if not through government plot then certainly through corporate influence. Oddly, the ownership change of TikTok was supposed to solve many of these problems. Since TikTok’s 2017 founding in China, American lawmakers and go…

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## Transcript

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