There was a protest and the state media was reporting on it. When the reporter said, "our camera broke down and we can only show black and white pictures", my father IMMEDIATELY jumped up and angrily said, "that's bs, you don't want to show how they [the protesting students] got beaten up [by the police]!"

This was an interesting life lesson. So yeah, sure, technical difficulties..

Edit: here’s a link to an example https://bsky.app/profile/seaniebyrne.bsky.social/post/3mby7j...

There was a major storm over the weekend. I think the issues have been resolved. Is it still the case anti ICE videos can't be uploaded? Seems easy to test.

I remember when everyone migrated from MySpace to Facebook and I assumed everyone was going to just keep moving over to the next big thing every few years but that actually didn't happen. Facebook became an institution.

If AI removes any technical limitations, and automates content management, what's stopping a content creator from owning what they create and distributing it themselves?

How can centralization continue to survive?

To be clear, I think both censorship regimes are not good, but I can't say I'm surprised.

I reported it for promoting violence, but TikTok found no violation of its guidelines.

It probably didn't help that the video was posted by the official White House TikTok account..

The only information outlet where we can have a reasonable expectation of freedom is the web itself, a good old websites on your own domain. Could be a txt file if you want to keep it simple ;)

it's just retaliation

and obviously, trump will play into this

You could leave tik-tok but that's where folks are at and the average tik-tok viewer is unlikely to leave their dank maymays just because of some "alleged" (and I use that term lightly) censorship

Going by the comments, people on TikTok seem very fast in seeing conspiracies, when many problems can be simply explained with normal problems or human failings. And it's good to be critical and aware of dangers, but I fear if they are so easy to call out problems, it will wear of fast, and people will start to ignore real problems again, like they used to be.

I had expected an Orbanisation (aka, what happened to the media sphere in Hungary after Orban took over and his cronies bought up almost all media) of Tiktok, but not that fast, it's like less than a week after the deal [2].

Scary shit if you ask me, and it's made scarier by the fact that Tiktok has already been changing the way our youth speaks due to evading censorship (e.g. "graped" instead of "raped", "unalived" instead of kill/murder/execute/suicide).

[1] https://x.com/krassenstein/status/2015911471507530219

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/23/heres-whats-you-should-kno...

Upscrolled looks like a promising alternative.

I really only come here for tech news, but I doubt ICE cares.

we're going to class this one as low priority / won't fix.

It was better when TikTok reported to the Third Department of the People's Liberation Army. They don't censor outside China.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5689104/tiktok-epstein-...

Perhaps on the tiktok Blind?

The same with X and, before that, Facebook.

TikTok has never worked for me though so maybe there's no real equivalent alternative. Maybe time to make one if not?

To me it says something about the public, but I'm not sure what. I'm tempted to attribute it to indifference or complacency but I'm aware of network effects and the reality of alternatives.

Sometimes I feel like education and theory about security practices needs to extend beyond micro-level phenomena like passwords, to things like administrative conflicts of interest and strength in decentralization and competition. Private monopolies and quasi-monopolies aren't just economically bad, they're bad for privacy and security, and make the public vulnerable through lack of choice. In important ways it doesn't matter if it's the government or a private company; whenever power concentrates it is easier to align and abuse.

https://gothamist.com/news/ai-videos-of-fake-nypdice-clashes...

I suspect these are some of those that have been banned from TikTok, and there's probably heightened moderation around this content at the moment since people are sharing AI-generated propaganda and riling others into violent confrontation with ICE.

A personal brush with this was with Scientology Protests around 2008 if I recall - I was at YouTube and there was a great kerfuffle among many of the top personalities who uploaded videos siding against Scientology. Their videos were not making it into the top rankings or getting the expected visibility. To them the obvious answer is that they were being deliberately suppressed - after all Scientology was a paying advertiser and brand on YT.

The reality was that the entire viewcount pipeline, and downstream aggregations were busted for about a day. Nobody was getting their full views counted in a timely way for that time.

I created two videos that contained nearly the same content. I recorded both by hand in one take, so they're not identical, obviously. Each talked about this issue. One used the term "Frozen Water," the other used "ICE". After eight hours:

   The "ICE" video has 5 views
   The "Frozen Water" video has 419 views

FWIW

They ALL do incredibly corrupt things

the revolution won't be televised because the bastards who own the networks won't let you see it and you probably wouldn't watch it anyway— you're too busy with your beer and your phone and your comfortable numbness.

the revolution won't be televised because it's not entertainment, not something you can half-watch while you're scratching your ass and wondering what to eat for dinner.

you can't consume revolution like you consume everything else— passive, bored, already thinking about the next thing.

the revolution won't be televised because it happens in the place you're most afraid to look: inside your own goddamn skull.

it starts when you stop lying to yourself, stop swallowing their garbage, stop pretending this is fine. it's not on TV. it's not coming to save you. it's just you and the choice to keep sleeping or finally wake the hell up. nobody's going to film that.

Remember when the story about Hunter Biden’s Laptop got banned from all major media? A story that could have been confirmed true by just emailing the subjects and asking them if the emails were real?

Remember when Google admitted to being pressured (and caving into said pressure) to censor conservative voices?

When we learned that Twitter allowed the US Military to run influence campaigns at people in the Middle East?

This isn’t new, we just don’t like when our weapon gets turned on us.

Free speech absolutism is the only sensible option.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/tiktok-epstein-trump-cens...

If you can upload any video but ICE brutality then I want to conduct system design session with their architect, tech lead, and CTO!

If TikTok suddenly blocks videos on a topic, and they say it was "technical issues", I'm going to guess the new US overlords accidentally pressed the wrong button.

Wonder how long before that button comes for HN. If Dang starts talking like ChatGPT we'll all know.

So I guess HN was just ahead of the curve.

It's sad that certain topics (anti-ICE, Epstein) neutered on a social media platform, but this went on for years when the politics were reversed.

Let everyone have their say, I say.

At least on the surface level, I could believe this is just a full algorithm reset and they are having problems with it. But even after other algorithm resets that I believe I've experienced, Tiktok figured it out extremely quickly. If this continues, I will believe in the heavyhanded censorship theory.

People laugh at MAGA conspiration theories backed by Fox News, but their conpiration theories - backed by CNN - sound just as insane for anyone that didn't buy into any of the 2 extremes...

This whole thing is such a shit show. The US government right now looks like a total ass of all asses on the world stage, but this TikTok business of the US demanding our country get to take over a social network preceeds this era of major fuckery by a good tick. And is just so stupid, so not what governments should do. Even if we hadn't had Trump just hand it over to his preferred "buyers" the Ellison's, it's just a grade a fuckup, absolute bedlam to do this, completely delegitmizes the US.

TikTok v. Garland and the First Amendment Anticanon paper by Evelyn Douek just came out, talking to what a first class First Amendment fuck up the unanimous Supreme Court decision was. Excellent read. Just could not have done a worst job, unbelievable nonsense that let this madness just persist & amplify. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6118706

Per https://www.npr.org/2026/01/27/nx-s1-5689104/tiktok-epstein-... :

> "We don't have rules against sharing the name 'Epstein' in direct messages and are investigating why some users are experiencing issues," a spokesman for TikTok's U.S. operation told NPR in a statement.

But the evidence in that Twitter thread should be weighed against the spokesperson's statement.

The general principle of Section 230 is that a platform provider isn't generally liable for user generated content. This was a key piece of legislation that enabled forums, Reddit and ultimately social media. The platform provider does have responsibilities like moderating illegal content and responding to legal takedowns, etc.

Alternatively if you produce and publish your own content you are legally liable. You can be sued for defamation, etc in a way that you can't if you simply host user generated content (unless you fail to adequately moderate).

REcommendation algorithms (including news feeds) effectively allow a platform provider to select what content gets distributed and what doesn't. All algorithms express biases and goals of humans who create those algorithms. It's not a black box. It is a reflection of the company's goals.

So if you wanted to produce content that's, for example, only flattering to the administration even if you outright lie, you can be sued. But what if your users produce any content you want but you only distribute content that is favorable to the administration? At the same time, you suppress anti-administration content and content creators. It's the same end result but the latter has Section 230 protections. And it really shouldn't.

This isn't hypothetical. The Biden administration revived the dead Trump 1 Tiktok ban to suppress anti-Israel content [1][2][3].

What I find most funny about all this is that the American administration--both parties--are doing the exact thing they accuse China is possibly doing in the future.

[1]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/10/tiktok-faces-renew...

[2]: https://www.internetgovernance.org/2024/03/18/yes-its-a-ban-...

[3]: https://x.com/snarwani/status/1725138601996853424

I had a condescending response from a HN mod the other day telling me that HN isn't all that left wing, just a 'slight skew'. Well OK buddy, exhibit A, read through the diversity of opinions that aren't flagged in this thread. I'd go as far to say that HN is basically like Reddit, except more of you happen to have computer science degrees.

And that's fine, it is what it is, but let's not pretend this website doesn't have a heavy bias in a particular direction.

Worthy for fell for it again award.

Weren't anti-ICE people just calling it "freeze peach" a minute ago? This is what that looks like. This is the group that repeated "nothingburger" over and over again when you said that government directly and publicly threatening private businesses if they didn't censor individuals was bad.

This is political. The Democrats began their open hatred of the left in the 90s when the Democrats cracked down on free speech during the anti-globalization protests (the introduction of fenced-in "free speech zones"), the party went all in on Iraq against the wishes of all people who were paying attention, Hillary Clinton mocked the left for objecting to a wall between Mexico and the United States, and Rahm Emanuel described people who wanted single-payer as "fucking retards."

Now the bizarre group of media-addicted partisans that now calls themselves the "left" fight for free trade and imported slave labor. They remind you that there are jobs that are too awful for Americans that are totally appropriate for Mexicans. That manufacturing is actually worthless, and we should import everything because as a reserve currency there's no need to produce anything. Trade deficits can be infinite, and America is meant to be a black hole, sucking in the worlds production and handing it to the rich. But the rich are bad, although we're giving them every single thing they want. Their politics judged on policy are to the right of Nixon. The only illegal immigrants they know are their employees. They've left behind Floyd, Illegal is the new Black.

Now, on HN, this isn't politics. This is something else. Only black people and women are politics. The creation of a masked, militarized federal police force filled with morons to enforce federal immigration law because Democratic cities and states are refusing to enforce it themselves? Not politics. The performance of Trump's street roundups to rally his base (and the working people in this country that are undercut by illegal labor, and the racists who think every Mexican is a rapist) while ignoring and writing exceptions for the corporations that employ illegal labor? Not politics.

Sorry, I meant something something something Russia, China, Iran, Nazis. And some specious, offensive comparison of people who just got here in order to make money to Black Americans enslaved and segregated over centuries.