Censorship is alive and real in America. While many politicians like to point fingers at the Chinese government for having heavy censorship, such a thing is also occurring in America right now. Just look at TikTok, which is now somewhat under the control of the American government after the joint-venture situation. Well, thanks to that, many TikTok users are now realizing that some topics are censored on the app. One Washington TikToker discovered that videos featuring ICE activities in Minnesota are heavily censored. It’s so bad that you wouldn’t expect to find one appearing on your home page.
Because of this censorship, the Washington TikToker devised a smart plan where she posted a series of videos in which she talked about shopping. However, in her hands, she held a book containing handwritten words of warning and information about what was happening on TikTok right now. She started the video by informing the viewers that this video isn’t about shopping, then went on explaining how TikTok is censoring videos about ICE activity in Minnesota. She claimed that you need to specifically search about them to find them on the platform.
The Washington TikToker urged her viewers to keep tabs on what was happening in Minnesota and said that schools were closed and people were hiding in their homes. That wasn’t the end, though, as memorials commemorating victims of ICE violence were burned and people who were detained were sometimes even dumped in the woods while naked.
Internet users who saw the video were understandably shocked and outraged at what was happening on TikTok. “This is terrifying,” one user wrote. Some users even made reference to the popular Chainsaw Man scene where one of the characters was forced to write down the truth on paper to avoid being monitored by the villain who could watch them at all times. Other commenters on TikTok tried to help the video by commenting on it. Of course, they couldn’t mention anything about ICE, as that would alert the censorship system, so they just commented on popular topics that might get picked up by the trend, like Bridgerton.
The video also spread to other social media platforms such as Reddit, where people could speak more freely about the situation. “For a moment, I didn’t understand why she was talking about travel clothes when her message on paper was different. I get it now. I wish I didn’t. This will sound very naïve, but I did actually think that what was happening in Minnesota had died down a little since there wasn’t much coverage. Well… this is why,” one Redditor said.
