Today, at perhaps the worst possible time, TikTok users were unable to see videos tagged with #BlackLivesMatter or #GeorgeFloyd. The situation created an immediate uproar.
As of this writing, Derek Chauvin, the former police officer recorded kneeling on the neck of George Floyd in a now-infamous video, has been arrested on charges of manslaughter and third-degree murder. This result comes after days of protests and riots in the state of Minnesota, as civilians express outrage over yet another police officer killing an unarmed Black man. The video is beyond unsettling, and the apparent lack of empathy displayed by Chauvin on camera is a major part of why members of the Black Lives Matter movement are fighting to keep attention on this case.
As a result, #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd have been consistently popular hashtags throughout this week. Posts about the protest, the progression of the case against Chauvin, and the impact of Floyd’s murder on both his family and the nation have all been filtered through that one hashtag. It’s understandable then, that TikTok users who wanted to post videos with the hashtag were incensed when it appeared to be blocked. During the upload process, TikTok will show the creator how many views a selected hashtag has. The problem was it showed #BlackLivesMatter as having zero views, which is what it would also show if a hashtag had been blocked. According to what the platform’s representatives told TheWrap, Black Lives Matter videos were never blocked. Instead, they were impacted by a “random bug”.
TikTok’s Explanation Still Leaves People Concerned
TikTok’s official Twitter account was quick to point out examples of hashtags that were similarly shown as having zero views, like #cat and #hello. The post was a reply to user @revengedja who first drew attention to the issue and it states that the bug affects “random words”. Replies to that explanation show people aren’t buying it, and for a simple reason: “dog” and “hello” are random words, but there’s nothing random about the phrases “Black Lives Matter” and “George Floyd”.
This doesn’t prove any malicious intent on TikTok’s part but it’s easy to be suspicious. TikTok’s moderation policies have been questionable since its inception and were just a topic of controversy less than a week ago. It’s not easy to draw a line and find a benefit to the platform banning those words, though, and the bug appears to be fixed now, as #BlackLivesMatter pulls up what one would expect. Users on Twitter point toward TikTok’s history of censoring other protests, but without evidence, and with the hashtags now functioning properly, the issue has subsided.
