A user on the video sharing app TikTok shared a video where she attempted to spread awareness about the ongoing persecution of Uighur Muslims in China. She began her video with the words, “Hi, guys. I’m going to teach you guys how to get long lashes.” Then, after a few seconds, she said, “Use your phone that you’re using right now to search up what’s happening in China, how they’re getting concentration camps, throwing innocent Muslims in there.”
Here is a trick to getting longer lashes! #tiktok #muslim #muslimmemes #islam pic.twitter.com/r0JR0HrXbm
— feroza.x (@x_feroza) November 25, 2019
The video gained huge popularity on the app, garnering nearly five lakh likes. However, Feroza Aziz’s account was soon suspended on the app. ByteDance spokesman, Josh Gartner, said Aziz was blocked from her TikTok account because she violated the terms and conditions by posting a video that contained an image of Osama bin Laden through an earlier account.
I am blocked from posting on tik tok for a month. This won’t silence me.
— feroza.x (@x_feroza) November 25, 2019
The suspension of Aziz’s account on TikTok after she highlighted the Chinese persecution of Uighur Muslims has triggered concerns about the Communist regime’s censorship patterns on the social networking sites it owns and the businesses it exerts influence over. As we have reported earlier, TikTok is owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance which is often touted to be the world’s most valuable start-up.
It is widely known that Chinese businesses are intimately linked to the Chinese regime and its foreign policy. The Communist party uses businesses as means to undermine the interests of foreign nations. TikTok is no different and it has sent the alarm bells ringing in the highest echelons of foreign governments.
Furthermore, there is no such thing as ‘independent businesses’ in China. Even multinational corporations that operate in the country must avoid incurring the wrath of the regime in any manner whatsoever. For instance, the NBA had to prostrate profusely before the Chinese regime and apologize vehemently after one of the team owners tweeted in favour of the Hong Kong protesters. China was not pleased and the NBA was overeager to make peace with it in order to preserve its business interests.
Social Media censorship, however, is not unique to Chinese owned platforms such as TikTok. Facebook, Twitter and Google, too, enforce ridiculous censorship on its platforms that consistent with the opinions of the US establishment. Therefore, in the current instance, TikTok’s conduct is not out of sync with how other social media giants operate. However, it does raise concerns about the overarching influence on narrative that Big Tech enjoys and can enforce.
