California governor Gavin Newsom accuses TikTok of suppressing content critical of Trump

The Guardian - World NewsCenter-LeftEN 3 min read 100% complete by Guardian staff and agenciesJanuary 27, 2026 at 06:00 AM

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California Governor Gavin Newsom has accused TikTok of suppressing content critical of former President Donald Trump. Newsom has launched a review of TikTok's content moderation practices, tasking the California Department of Justice with determining if the platform violated state law. The accusation follows TikTok's deal to establish a US-owned joint venture to address US data security concerns. Newsom's office stated they received reports and confirmed instances of suppressed content critical of Trump after the sale. TikTok's US joint venture attributed the issues to a data center power outage and subsequent systems failure, denying censorship. Several users have reported abnormalities and accused the platform of censoring their posts.

Key Entities & Roles

Key Player Opposition Context

University of Colorado 35% Georgetown University's School of Law 35% Steve Vladeck 40% Casey Fiesler 40% California Department of Justice 60% United States ×265% ByteDance 70% California ×275% Donald Trump ×585% Gavin Newsom ×490% TikTok ×895%

Keywords

tiktok 100% gavin newsom 90% content moderation 90% content suppression 80% donald trump 80% systems failure 60% bytedance 60% national security 50% data privacy 50%

Sentiment Analysis

Negative

Score: -0.30

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Source

The Guardian - World News

Political Lean

Center-Left (-0.40)

Far LeftCenterFar Right

Classification Confidence

90%

Geographic Perspective

California

This article was automatically classified using rule-based analysis. The political bias score ranges from -1 (far left) to +1 (far right).

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tiktok gavin newsom content moderation content suppression donald trump systems failure bytedance national security data privacy

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