Are Americans Being Censored?
Read Time:4 Minute, 49 Second
The fear of censorship has grown since Inauguration Day and the new Trump presidency. This began with the TikTok ban on January 18th, 2025 and the message that the creators of the app left behind in the app’s wake:
“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!”
Mere hours later the app became usable once again to Americans with a new message that read:
“Thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the U.S.!”
These messages differed from Trump’s stance on TikTok during his previous presidency when he issued an executive order on August 6, 2020 stating, “At this time, action must be taken to address the threat posed by one mobile application in particular, TikTok.” Within this executive order President Trump shared that he feared for Americans’ privacy as the app was and still is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese parent company and part of the Chinese Communist Party. In the executive order the President explained, “TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information”
With this switch in policy many Americans have become wary of government censorship not only within TikTok but also American news outlets—a theory that has grown rapidly within the TikTok app.
One of the biggest stories spreading throughout TikTok following the ban was the world-wide protests against President Trump. While many protests have been organized throughout the United States against the president, the “world-wide” protests are not actually against President Trump or “for the United States,” as many people believed. Some of the protests TikTok users have referred to as “for America” are German protests regarding their own government and the growing far-right AfD party. This is a movement that has taken over Germany as they gear closer to their upcoming election and as the AfD party has grown. Though, as German protestors have attempted to grow the movement on TikTok, Americans have claimed the protests as their own.
A TikToker @kira.isch posted their video from a FLINTA* March in Berlin, a protest “for the rights of women, inter, non-binary, trans, and agender people,” according to the video’s caption. This then began to receive comments such as “Thank you all from the U.S.,” from @suesbakegoods and “OMG this is the first protest the algorithm has let me see!! Feeling so hopeful from USA,” from user @creating.in.chaos. But, others have taken to the app to let Americans know they are not protesting for them. German TikTok user, @mablepurple, posted a video on January 28, 2025 where they stated, “My dear Americans, I’m so sorry to break it to you but we’re not protesting on your behalf. I’ve seen so many Americans on this app being like, ‘Oh my God they’re protesting for us around the world’ and the comments under those videos are full with ‘Oh my God they don’t show this,’ and ‘Oh, our media they’re not showing this they’re censoring us they don’t want us to know this.’ We don’t protest for you, yet at least… As Germans we’ve kind of got new elections in less than a month… So no, I’m sorry. We are not protesting for you, we are protesting for us.”
The fake news has grown through users posting videos promoting the idea like @keishabeauty0’s video. The post titled, “Protest around the world, Protesting for us in America,” features the user stating, “Did y’all know… that there are people all around the world protesting for us in America and we didn’t even know. We have been censored that bad. Blame the algorithm if this video doesn’t go anywhere…”
Censorship scares have also transcended miscommunications on social media and moved towards speculation. TikTok user @nydiafreyre took to the app on January 25th to share how they believed the app was hiding the Ben & Jerry’s account from them sharing a video that reads, “Okay but seriously that’s weird I never blocked them y’all should check if you have them blocked too”. This was likely inspired by speculations that Instagram and its parent company, Meta, was following President Trump and Vice President Vance’s Instagram accounts on people’s behalf. Meta then put out a statement explaining how this was just due to the accounts changing from the previous administration to the new one. Andy Stone, a Meta representative, took to Threads to explain, “People were not made to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts for the President, Vice President or First Lady. Those accounts are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those Pages changes. This is the same procedure we followed during the last presidential transition.”
With this wave of fake news and censorship it’s important to remember to check sources. If a consumer believes that the American news outlets are censoring news, they can access non-American news outlets all over the internet. Checking reputable sources before taking social media posts as true has become essential in navigating the Internet. Our readers can read more about how to navigate fake news through our How to Dodge Fake News article.
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