Censorship claims, investigations, and alternate apps: The U.S. TikTok app is off to a rough start

If you thought all of the U.S. TikTok drama would subside once the federal government officially launched its version of the social video app, you are sorely mistaken. Amid a chaotic political moment in America, some TikTok users have claimed that posts touching on hot-button issues have been silenced — and many more users are doing away with the app entirely.

The U.S. and China agreed on their long-rumored TikTok deal on January 22, just two days before the death of Alex Pretti threw fuel on a political firestorm that has been burning since Donald Trump began his second term in the Oval Office. In the wake of the shooting, many TikTok users attempted to post videos commenting on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in Minneapolis, but some found they were unable to do so.

The comedian Meg Stalter, for example, claimed that an anti-ICE video reposted from Instagram failed to upload on TikTok. Other users reported similar stories. One X user shared a screenshot that suggests “epstein” is now a verboten word on Trump’s TikTok.

The entity in charge of the new U.S. app, TikTok USDS Joint Venture, claimed that technical issues at a data center caused those glitches. “We’ve made significant progress in recovering our U.S. infrastructure with our U.S. data center partner,” reads a statement posted on X. “However, the U.S. user experience may still have some technical issues, including when posting new content.”

Though technical difficulties make for a believable culprit, opponents of the Trump administration have found that excuse to be a bit fishy. From its inception, the U.S. version of TikTok has been seen as a check on youth discourse.

One of the architects of the bill that led to TikTok’s divestiture, Senator Mark Warner (D-VA), admitted that the legislation was a nonstarter until TikTok became a hotbed for anti-Israel sentiments. Control over TikTok’s content recommendation algorithm was a key asset handed over to the U.S. in the $14 billion deal, and it’s hard to believe the Trump administration wouldn’t use that power to uplift supportive posts at the expense of dissent.

Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat from California, has pledged to investigate the technical issues affecting U.S. TikTok. “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,” reads a statement from the Governor’s press office.

Some TikTok users aren’t even bothering to wait for the results of the investigation — they’ve already seen enough. TikTok uninstallations have spiked since the debut of TikTok USDS Joint Venture, and alternative apps are seeing sudden reversals of fortune. A social platform called UpScrolled became one of the ten most-downloaded apps in the United States, and TikTok lookalike Skylight now counts more than 380,000 users.

Perhaps the censorship claims will eventually be confirmed as data center issues, but the damage is already done. The mass uninstallations serve as a reminder that most U.S. citizens never asked for a new version of TikTok, and they certainly didn’t promise to like the app the Trump-backed team put in front of them.