TikTok and U.S. Tech Policy

A new academic analysis of more than 100,000 TikTok videos finds no evidence that the app’s new U.S. owners — a consortium led by Oracle’s Larry Ellison — systematically throttled posts about ICE raids, Jeffrey Epstein, or the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, despite viral #TikTokCensorship claims and calls for investigations from Gov. Gavin Newsom and EU lawmakers. Published in Good Authority, the study shows views for political and non‑political content alike crashed to near zero during a documented data‑center outage and then rebounded, suggesting a technical failure rather than targeted political suppression. Researchers still warn that limited or 'shadowbanned' removals can’t be ruled out at small scale and note they had no access to private direct messages, where some users said the word 'Epstein' was briefly blocked. They also stress that TikTok, unlike X or Facebook, offers little structured data access for outside auditors and call on platforms to open their recommender systems to independent scrutiny so claims of political influence can be tested instead of litigated on social media. The findings undercut a popular narrative that Ellison immediately re‑tuned TikTok for Trump, but they highlight how secrecy around algorithms and outages continues to fuel public distrust.