Topics Suppressed in China Are Underrepresented on TikTok, Study Says

Topics often suppressed by the Chinese government within its borders, including Tibet, Hong Kong protests and the Uyghur population, appear to be unusually underrepresented on TikTok compared with Instagram, according to a report published Thursday by online researchers.

The findings could add to a wave of concern that Beijing may be influencing content on the popular video platform. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company.

The report, from the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University, analyzed the volume of posts with certain hashtags on TikTok and Instagram, which has hundreds of millions more users.

For popular pop culture and politics terms like #TaylorSwift and #Trump, the researchers found roughly two Instagram posts for every one on TikTok, the report said. But that ratio jumped to more than 8-to-1 for #Uyghur or #Uighur, 30-to-1 for #Tibet, 57-to-1 for #TiananmenSquare, and 174-to-1 for #HongKongProtest.

“We assess a strong possibility that content on TikTok is either amplified or suppressed based on its alignment with the interests of the Chinese government,” the report said. Joel Finkelstein, a founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute, said, “It’s not believable that this could happen organically.”

TikTok, which has said repeatedly that the Chinese government has no influence over the app, pushed back on the research.