TikTok suspended the account of the Acton Institute after the libertarian think tank promoted multiple videos about Hong Kong pro-democracy icon Jimmy Lai and the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown in the city, one of which racked up 2.3 million views. The suspension follows the temporary removal of a video that featured a former senior State Department official.
Acton’s director of communication and marketing, Eric Kohn, said on Twitter today that the suspension came yesterday “without notice or explanation.”
The Acton Institute recently produced a documentary about Lai, who was jailed in 2020 by Hong Kong’s authorities for his outspoken support of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. He is facing trial over charges that he violated the national-security law imposed on Hong Kong by the Chinese Communist Party that year.
Acton posted six videos featuring clips from the film, which collectively received more than 4 million views.
One of these videos was initially removed on April 21, Kohn told National Review. The minute-long clip, which remains available on YouTube, discussed the U.K.’s 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China, and it featured an interview in which Mary Kissel, a former senior State Department official, called the handover “Thatcher’s biggest mistake.”
You can watch that video here and judge for yourself. https://t.co/YFbfSeB1VA
We appealed that decision, noting that this content had been shared on numerous other social media platforms without any problems.
The video was restored in a few hours. 5/
— Eric Kohn 🥃 (@iEricKohn) May 3, 2023
According to Kohn’s tweets, TikTok claimed that the video was removed for “violent and graphic content.” The minute-long clip includes footage of police tear-gassing and clashing with protesters. After the Acton Institute appealed the decision, “the video was restored in a few hours,” Kohn wrote.
Yesterday, around noon, TikTok suspended the think tank’s account. Although the Acton Institute submitted information about the suspension via TikTok’s feedback form, it can’t log in to contest the suspension. “We’ve received radio silence from TikTok,” Kohn wrote.
A TikTok spokesperson did not respond to National Review’s request for comment.
Democracy advocates are speaking out about the suspension. “Despite their ‘best’ efforts, the CCP can’t hide the truth about Jimmy Lai’s bogus case and the demise of Hong Kong,” the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong said in a post about Acton’s suspension from TikTok.
This is far from the first time that TikTok has blocked content critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Although its executives maintain that plenty of anti-CCP content remains available on the app, TikTok has also conspicuously blocked prominent figures, including a Chinese dissident, following posts about topics sensitive to Beijing.
In December, TikTok briefly suspended Kim Wong, a journalist from Hong Kong, for “abusive behavior” after he posted content comparing last fall’s zero-Covid protests to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, according to the Washington Post. TikTok told the Post that Wong had been suspended in error, that he was reinstated within two minutes of his appeal, and that all of his videos remain available on the platform.