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TikTok locks teen’s account after video on China Muslims, then says no political censorship

China's TikTok suspended the account of US teen Feroza Aziz allegedly after she uploaded a video criticising treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

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New Delhi: TikTok, the video-making mobile application, has found itself mired in yet another controversy after it suspended the account of a US teenage girl allegedly after she criticised China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is headquartered in China.

Feroza Aziz, 17, had put up a video last week pretending to give a tutorial on eyelash curling, but soon began condemning China’s crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. 

While curling her eyelashes, Aziz tells viewers, “Now you’re going to put the lash curler down and use the phone that you’re using right now to search up what’s happening in China, how they’re getting concentration camps and putting innocent Muslims in there.”

“This is another holocaust, yet no one is talking about it. Please be aware, please spread awareness,” she says, before switching back to her tutorial, “Yeah, so you can grab your lash curler again.’’

The video went viral almost instantly, garnering over 4 lakh likes on TikTok. It went viral across other social media platforms too.

Aziz reportedly put up two more follow-up videos on TikTok, telling viewers how they could help Uyghurs lodged in “re-education camps” in Xinjiang. 

TikTok cracked down on Aziz’s account just as quickly, suspending it Monday for “multiple violations”. 


Also read: TikTok is working to look less Chinese and it’s a smart move


Another reason for me to speak louder, says Aziz

Speaking to Rolling Stone magazine Tuesday, Aziz said: “I think it’s extremely fishy that right when I post those videos about China, my account gets suspended.”

ByteDance Inc, the company that owns TikTok, has denied that the suspension had anything to do with Aziz’s criticism of China’s treatment of Uyghurs and said it “does not moderate content due to political sensitivities”.

A TikTok spokesperson told Rolling Stone that the company suspended Aziz’s account because 10 days earlier, she had posted a video from an old account featuring Osama bin Laden’s poster, which was picked up by TikTok’s algorithms as “terrorist content” and later banned.

Her new account, in which she brought up the topic of Uyghur Muslims, was suspended because she violated guidelines by creating a new account, the spokesperson said. 

Aziz, however, said the incident is “just another reason for me to speak louder”.

Controversial past of TikTok 

TikTok was launched by ByteDance in 2017. Last year, ByteDance acquired another video-making app Musical.ly and merged it with TikTok.

In these two years, the app has grown massively — garnering 500 million active users worldwide — and expanding its selling point to become one of the most popular video-making apps.

But its steady expanse has also led users to post political content — like the video Aziz was allegedly suspended for. 

ByteDance, headquartered in Beijing, has come under fire repeatedly in the past for allegedly censoring content that goes against the country’s ruling Communist Party of China. 

More recently, it has been accused of suppressing content related to the Hong Kong protests. A September 2019 investigation by The Guardian found that TikTok has a policy of censoring videos that deal with Tiananmen Square, Tibetan independence or the banned religious group Falun Gong.   

This apart, ByteDance is also under US government scanner for its acquisition of Musical.ly.


Also read: This is how US’ Facebook and China’s TikTok differ in threats they pose in cyber space


 

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