The Corner
TikTok Claims ‘Technical Error’ Led to Suspension of Think Tank that Posted about Hong Kong
The Acton Institute said that it’s still unclear what sort of activity could have led to the suspension.
TikTok has reinstated the account of the Acton Institute — which had posted several videos about the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown in Hong Kong — in a reversal of a daylong suspension. In comments to National Review, the company explained the suspension as a technical glitch.
The Acton Institute had set up an account on the video-sharing platform to promote its new documentary on Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy media mogul who was imprisoned by the city’s authorities. On Tuesday, TikTok suspended the account, thus removing access to six clips Acton had posted about the film, called “The Hong Konger,” which details Lai’s persecution by Beijing.
Following condemnations of the move by Republican representatives Ken Buck and John Moolenaar, and coverage by National Review and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the suspension was quietly reversed last night. The two members of Congress each said that the suspension shows why it’s necessary to ban TikTok.
The account was suspended due to a “technical error,” TikTok spokesperson Jamal Brown asserted in a statement today. “One of our automated systems observed unusual activity on this account which caused it to be removed in error. We’ve reinstated the account and its content and are investigating the cause of this technical error,” he told National Review. TikTok also says that its anti-spam systems monitor certain signals, including likes, follows, message-request volume, and the date of an account’s creation.
National Review had also asked several additional questions about the suspension, including whether TikTok employees engaged with ByteDance, Chinese officials, or the Hong Kong authorities regarding the Acton Institute suspension, and if TikTok is in full compliance with the Hong Kong national-security law. Brown responded, “No” to these other questions.
TikTok has long faced allegations that some of its content-moderation decisions have been shaped by the Chinese Communist Party’s political sensitivities. During previous controversies about the removal of content on the Uyghur genocide from the platform, the company has claimed that such steps were taken in error.
In at least one private meeting with Congressional staff in 2020, TikTok’s lobbyists made comments — with talking points that two attendees believed to echo Chinese propaganda — explaining the suspension and subsequent reinstatement of the account of a girl who had posted about the Uyghur genocide.
During a Congressional hearing in March, TikTok CEO Shou Chew claimed that his company does not “remove or promote content on behalf of the Chinese government.”
With its account now restored, the Acton Institute said that it’s still unclear what sort of activity could have led to the suspension.
“I’m not sure what unusual activity they could have observed on the account, since the videos had been posted since April 18,” Acton’s communications director, Eric Kohn, told National Review. “Is the unusual activity the fact that millions of people on TikTok were seeing content pointing them to The Hong Konger documentary and telling the truth about what the Chinese Communist Party is doing to Jimmy Lai and the people of Hong Kong?”
Kohn wrote on Twitter last night that even after the suspension was lifted, two of the videos — one about what it means to be a Hong Konger and another about how Lai was characterized as a “terrorist” by Beijing — were still blocked by TikTok. Acton later noticed that they, too, were restored by Thursday morning.
Brown, the TikTok spokesperson, did not explain why the two videos were not immediately restored with the rest of the account, only noting that all of the account’s content is now available.