Tik Tok users found out that hashtags calling for justice for George Floyd have been blocked on the platform, the same with black lives matter. Users went to Twitter to furiously slam the video-sharing platform.
Specific kinds of hashtags such as #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd were reportedly blocked so that users were unable to add those hashtags to their posts. The majority felt this was Tik Tok’s way of promoting racism and not speaking out about the current happening.
Tiktok is Chinese video-sharing social network app owned by ByteDance, a Beijing based company. The App allows users to create and share short videos, lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos. It also features stickers, filters and augmented reality shows. Tiktok was launched in 2017 for iOS and Android in markets outside of China. It also quickly became the world’s fourth most downloaded App in 2018, beating Instagram and Snapchat. Fast forward to 2020, and while we’re all on lockdown across the globe, Tiktok has become the App everyone including celebs is trying out right now.
Many people are having a problem with the social App, and most black people complain that the platform doesn’t promote their videos like other race.
Singer Lizzo once said that TikTok has repeatedly removed her videos in which she wears bathing suits while permitting other women to share posts in swimwear.
Responding to the allegations, TikTok on Friday, May 29th said that a “random” bug caused view counts of hashtags on its social media platform to stop appearing, including tags for the Black Lives Matter movement and others related to the recent police killing of George Floyd.
The error was first pointed out by a TikTok user who went to upload a video to TikTok and found he was unable to see the tags. The user posted on Twitter yesterday, “TikTok blocked the #blacklivesmatter tag and every single tag related to #GeorgeFloyd. This is disgusting.”
A TikTok spokesperson told TheWrap that view counts of the hashtags #GeorgeFloyd and #BlackLivesMatter had been fixed, and video creators will now again see the viewer count of popular tags displayed on the video upload screen. The issue was happening before content was uploaded to the social media site and videos using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter continue to be posted, TikTok added.
