U.S. TikTok users say they can’t upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues

The icon for the TikTok video sharing app is seen on a smartphone in Marple Township, Pa., Feb. 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

The comedian Megan Stalter, who posts absurd character skits to an audience in the high hundreds of thousands across Instagram and TikTok, tried sharing a different kind of video on Saturday night. Driven by the death of Alex Pretti, the nurse shot by a federal immigration agent or agents that day, she had recorded herself urging her fellow Christians to speak out against ICE raids in Minneapolis.

“We have to abolish ICE,” Stalter said in the video. “I truly, truly believe that is exactly what Jesus would do.”

On Instagram, the video was reposted more than 12,000 times. But her plea never made it to TikTok. In a follow-up post on Instagram, she said she had attempted to upload the video to TikTok several times with no success, then had given up and deleted her TikTok account entirely, believing her content was being censored because it was about ICE. (CNN has reached out to Stalter for comment.)

Other users reported the same combination of events, drawing a circumstantial connection between their efforts to make videos about ICE and the difficulties they had posting them over the weekend. The controversy caught the attention of Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, who said that among “threats to democracy,” the purported censorship on TikTok was “at the top of the list.” (CNN has reached out to Murphy’s office for comment.)

TikTok said in a statement that glitches on the app were due to a power outage at a US data center. As a result, a spokesperson for TikTok US Joint Venture told CNN, it’s taking longer for videos to be uploaded and recommended to other users. The tech issues are ongoing, TikTok said, and are “unrelated to last week’s news.”

Last week, a majority American-owned joint venture took control of TikTok’s assets in the US, in a deal shepherded by the Trump administration under a 2024 law requiring the app to move out from under its previous Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States. Among its new investors is the tech company Oracle, whose executive chair Larry Ellison is a close affiliate of President Donald Trump. Oracle will store US TikTok users’ data in a “secure US cloud environment,” according to TikTok, and the new joint venture will “have decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and content moderation.”

As a private platform, TikTok is free to exert influence on what users can upload or see. Even if accusations of TikTok’s censorship are unprovable, it’s understandable that US users would be increasingly skeptical of the platform in this moment, said Casey Fiesler, an associate professor of technology ethics and internet law at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

“There’s not a lot of trust in the leadership of social media platforms in general,” Fiesler told CNN. “And given the connection of the new ownership of TikTok to the Trump administration, which is so wrapped up in what is happening with ICE in Minnesota, it’s not surprising that there’s a significant lack of trust.”

TikTok users are concerned

Fiesler said she was “unsurprised” about censorship concerns on TikTok, given the timing.

Almost immediately after oversight of TikTok’s US operations changed, misinformation started to spread about changes to the app’s new terms of service, including those that applied to location sharing and data collection, Fiesler said.

“A lot of TikTok users are concerned about what this new ownership means, both with respect to who has access to their data, and how content recommendation might change or could change,” Fiesler said. “I think those are valid concerns.”

A few days ago, Fiesler posted some videos aiming to debunk those rumors about the changes to the terms of service, and those were uploaded without issue. She has attempted to upload two videos since Sunday afternoon, one of which she says is still “under review” by TikTok and can’t be viewed publicly. While both generally alluded to ongoing ICE action in Minneapolis, she used it as a framing device to discuss media literacy. One of the videos did successfully upload on Monday, though its captions and view counter weren’t working for several hours, she said.

“Even if this isn’t purposeful censorship, does it matter? In terms of perception and trust, maybe,” Fiesler said.

Jen Hamilton, a nurse and author with more than 4.5 million TikTok followers, says she became suspicious of TikTok on January 22, the day of the announced change in control in the US, when a video she made about 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos being taken by federal agents wouldn’t upload.

“It was very ironic for that very first day of this takeover, for me to post something about ICE and then it not be viewable to the public,” Hamilton told CNN, adding that the video still can’t be seen by her followers.

After she posted a still about Pretti, her next four videos couldn’t be uploaded, she said.

“Something has shifted in the way that content is getting put on the platform, or allowed to be on the platform,” she said, while noting that she didn’t have proof of being personally censored. “And I just find it very ironic that it’s the same day that it takes over that people are not being able to post their stuff.”

An opaque algorithm

It would be incredibly difficult to prove TikTok is censoring content about ICE because the platform’s content recommendation process is so opaque, said Jeffrey Blevins, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who studies media law and ethics, among other subjects. Plus, if TikTok were intentionally censoring content about ICE, it would be within its legal right.

“They’re a private platform. They have a First Amendment right to do that,” he said. “A lot of times it’s easy for us to think of social media as a public square, but it’s not public in a way that matters under the law.”

Some users, like Stalter, are deleting their accounts and leaving the app altogether (though some have also had trouble deleting their accounts, Fiesler noted). The daily average of TikTok uninstalls are up nearly 150% in the last five days compared to the last three months, market firm SensorTower told CNBC on Monday.

“If people leave TikTok now, I suspect it’s a combination of things, not just because some videos weren’t posted on one day. It’s also concerns about what this means for the future.”

Hamilton said while she’s exploring options like Substack and Patreon, where followers can pay to hear her unvarnished thoughts, she won’t fully abandon TikTok.

“This whole thing is intended to dissuade people, especially who are sharing a narrative that is not similar to what the government is wanting people to hear,” she said she suspects. “I think the purpose of having those people feel like their content is not safe on this platform is to get them to stop speaking out, or use the platform differently, or play by the rules.”

She’s already figured out ways to continue to talk about ICE, she said. In a video that did make it through TikTok’s uploading process, she calls herself a “fashion influencer” and speaks in code about her trouble uploading an earlier video about Liam.

“Fashion influencing is in my blood,” she said in the video, with a photo of Liam behind her. “And even a company with bad customer service won’t keep me from doing my fashion review.”

By Scottie Andrew