TikTok has issued an apology after users have accused the platform of censoring #BlackLivesMatter posts after some realized that the videos posted received 0 views.
The company said that the issue can be attributed to a technical issue which also affected other hashtags.
Users came forward to compain that the tags #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd were shown to have zero views and users questioned why the app was surpressing these hashtags after protests and riots erupted internationally following last week’s death of George Floyd in Minnesota.
“We acknowledge and apologize to our Black creators and community who have felt unsafe, unsupported, or suppressed,” wrote Vanessa Pappas, TikTok U.S. general manager, and Kudzi Chikumbu, director of creator community, in a blog post entitled ‘A message to our Black community.’
“A technical glitch made it temporarily appear as if posts uploaded using #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd would receive 0 views,” they continued, adding that posts with these hashtags actually had over 2 billion views.
@tiktok To our community, a message from our CEO…
Other popular hashtags including #cat and #dad were also affected by the issue, which started on Thursday and was fixed by Friday.
In a separate post on the TikTok app, the company’s incoming CEO, Kevin Mayer, said: “As I begin my work at TikTok, it has never been a more important time to support Black employees, users, creators, artists, and our broader community.”
TikTok has since been extremely forthcoming and shared their support with activists and on their own social media platforms.
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