TikTok has apologized after last week’s” technical glitch” made it temporarily appear that videos using #BlackLivesMatter and George Floyd hashtags had no views.
“We acknowledge and apologize to our Black creators and community who have felt unsafe, unsupported, or suppressed,” Vanessa Pappas, TikTok’s U.S. GM, and director of creator community Kudzi Chikumbu said in a blog post on Monday. “We don’t ever want anyone to feel that way. We welcome the voices of the Black community wholeheartedly.”
“To show their solidarity with the movement, TikTok is participating in Blackout Tuesday. The company will be disabling all playlists and campaigns on the Sounds page “to observe a moment of reflection and action,” Pappas and Chikumbu said ahead of yesterday’s demonstration. In addition, the execs confirmed that the platform will be donating $3 million to nonprofit organizations that assist the black community who has been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus outbreak as well as another $1 million that will go toward “fighting the racial injustice and inequality that we are witnessing in this country.”
Many TikTok users called out the social media platform for intentionally censoring support of the Black Lives Matter movement and the current protests stemming from the murder of George Floyd by white police officer Derek Chauvin. However, TikTok execs have refuted these allegations, claiming that the glitch was only “a display issue.” The company, owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance, also added that videos with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag has generated over 2 billion views.
This is not the company’s first time coming under fire for censoring videos. They have also been accused of censoring content that was in support of pro-democracy protests that invaded Hong Kong last year. However, they have denied censoring these videos as well.
