{"id":151444,"date":"2026-01-27T10:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T10:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/151444\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T10:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T10:51:09","slug":"californias-newsom-accuses-tiktok-of-suppressing-trump-criticism-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/151444\/","title":{"rendered":"California’s Newsom accuses TikTok of suppressing Trump criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newsom’s office reviews TikTok content moderation practicesNewsom asks for checks whether state law is being violatedTikTok recently struck new deal to avoid US banCompany blames cascading systems failureWASHINGTON, Jan 26 (Reuters) – California Governor Gavin Newsom accused TikTok<\/a> on Monday of suppressing content critical of President Donald Trump<\/a> as he launched a review to decide if its content moderation practices violated state law, while the platform cited a systems failure.<\/p>\n

Newsom’s statement came after TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, last week finalized a deal to set up a majority U.S.-owned joint venture that will secure U.S. data, to avert a ban on the short video app used by more than 200 million Americans.<\/p>\n

Sign up here.<\/a><\/p>\n

ByteDance said TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC would secure U.S. user data, apps and algorithms through data privacy and cybersecurity measures, in a deal praised by Trump.<\/p>\n

“Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports, and independently confirmed instances, of suppressed content critical of President Trump,” Newsom’s office said on X, without elaborating.<\/p>\n

“Gavin Newsom is launching a review of this conduct and is calling on the California Department of Justice to determine whether it violates California law,” it added.<\/p>\n

In response, a TikTok representative pointed to a prior statement that blamed a data center power outage, adding, “It would be inaccurate to report that this is anything but the technical issues we’ve transparently confirmed.”<\/p>\n

Users may notice bugs, slower load times or timed-out requests when posting new content due to the impact of the outage, the joint venture added.<\/p>\n

“While the network has been recovered, the outage caused a cascading systems failure that we’ve been working to resolve,” it said in the statement on X posted before Newsom’s remarks.<\/p>\n

Last week’s deal was a milestone for TikTok after years of battles with the U.S. government over Washington’s concerns about risks to national security and privacy under Trump and former President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Newsom, a Democrat, and Trump, a Republican, have long been critical of each other.<\/p>\n

With more than 16 million followers on his personal TikTok account, Trump credited the app with helping him win the 2024 election.<\/p>\n

The deal provides for American and global investors to hold 80.1% of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9%.<\/p>\n

Each of the joint venture’s three managing investors, cloud computing giant Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab<\/a>, private equity group Silver Lake (SILAK.UL) and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX, will hold a stake of 15%.<\/p>\n

The U.S. and Chinese governments had signed off on the deal, a White House official said.<\/p>\n

Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Christian Martinez and Clarence Fernandez<\/p>\n

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab<\/a><\/p>\n

Purchase Licensing Rights<\/a>\"Kanishka<\/a><\/p>\n

Kanishka Singh is a breaking news reporter for Reuters in Washington DC, who primarily covers US politics and national affairs in his current role. His past breaking news coverage has spanned across a range of topics like the Black Lives Matter movement; the US elections; the 2021 Capitol riots and their follow up probes; the Brexit deal; US-China trade tensions; the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan; the COVID-19 pandemic; and a 2019 Supreme Court verdict on a religious dispute site in his native India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Newsom’s office reviews TikTok content moderation practicesNewsom asks for checks whether state law is being violatedTikTok recently struck…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1180,21082,17265,21083,7,9,8,1122,14962,53089,1219,1221,1220,1223,7490,2768,1222,2941,17313,74799,35927,2940,17267,1139,17269,17270,65707,1186,73428,1151,7491,1224,1153,1154,17271,1157,22216,73429,7434,14964,69777,17316,2773,2769,2774,2766,995,2767,2777,7433,2775,1181,7432,1174,68658],"class_list":["post-151444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-amers","tag-bact","tag-bisv","tag-biz","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-cmpny","tag-cwp","tag-deal1","tag-destocabsm","tag-destocatpm","tag-destousbsm","tag-destousdnm","tag-destouspom","tag-destoustcm","tag-destoustpm","tag-destseabs","tag-dli","tag-dvst","tag-ent","tag-fin","tag-fins","tag-gen","tag-invbis","tag-invm","tag-lif","tag-namer","tag-newr","tag-news1","tag-packageus-politics","tag-packageus-top-news","tag-pol","tag-potus","tag-privt","tag-publ","tag-pve","tag-reg","tag-rulestrump","tag-secur","tag-smed","tag-soci","tag-sofent","tag-sofw","tag-sofw1","tag-swit","tag-tech","tag-tmt","tag-topcmb","tag-topicworld-us-california","tag-topnws","tag-us","tag-usaca","tag-wash","tag-www"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}