Social media rivals Meta and YouTube have announced similar suspensions of Russian state media accounts this month.

TikTok said Monday it had removed accounts belonging to the Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik for engaging in what it called “covert influence operations.”

The social video app said in a statement on its website that it removed accounts associated with TV-Novosti and Rossiya Segodnya, the parent organizations of the RT television network and the Russian news agency Sputnik. TikTok said the accounts had violated its community guidelines, in particular its ban on deceptive behavior.

The associated accounts are now permanently banned, a TikTok spokesperson said in an email.

  • ThirdWorldOrder@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    Can anyone with some knowledge about TikTok fill me in? Are they trying to blend in with Western tech? Are they beholden to Chinese government wishes or are they working autonomously?

    Good for them for doing this, although I’m sure someone will tell me otherwise.

      • ThirdWorldOrder@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Thanks for the article, I’ll check it out soon. This has the appearance of just trying to comply with western standards then, in preparation for the lawsuit.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Considering that any one who does business in china is beholden to china- even and maybe especially foreign companies; the reality is that TikTok is a victim of politics.

      To be clear: they’re all giving (or selling,) that data to the CCP.

      The problem won’t go away until there’s privacy protections controlling what can be collected and who it can be shared with.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      One side says the Chinese company that owns part of them has an outsized influence and gets all the data back. The other side says they only get anonymous headcount data and points out TikTok global is run from a South East Asian country I can’t remember right now, (but not China), and TikTok US is run from Los Angeles.

      That’s about as good as you’re going to get without made up stuff until more evidence comes out in court. When I say made up stuff I mean like allegations of fixing the algorithm to turn all the kids communist. For which no public evidence has been offered, just politicians asserting that on camera.

      • ThirdWorldOrder@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Thank you for giving an objective overview of the matter. I’ve been on the internet forever and the only pro communist stuff I ever see is here on Lemmy lol