He had to defend TikTok to win over youth votes for the election.

Now that he's pres again, he knows that in one year it will become very apparent that he can't lower grocery/gas prices, and isn't willing to take action on home prices, the deficit, AI, or wage inequality.

So instead he has a list of things that will prop up his approval rating, because that is the only metric that actually matters to him. Right now that seems to mean keeping TikTok, and annexing new territory (even if that just means renaming the Gulf of Mexico).

Trump doesn't want people to express freedom of speech as a Nazi he prefers people not know about certain things. The government wants only America propaganda. Therefore TikTok has to cater to Trump's ego to stay in the US.

I now call it trump tok because of you post anything that's anti trump or his Nazi regime you will get banned.

If you post anything about LGBT stuff or anything anti "America" you will get banned.

Fascism. That's what's going on.

It's clear Trump wants to control all social media within the US.

1. Musk took twitter and turned it into a far right hate speech platform
2. Zuckerberg has a private meeting with Trump. Next day donates $1m to the inaugural fund. Facebook, Instagram and Threads remove fact-checking in the US and Zuckerberg. There's some very odd fuckery afoot with left searches that are blamed on a technical glitch.
3. Tiktok is threatened with closure. They suddenly align themselves with Trump and the lights stay on.
4. Google's boss, Sundar Pichai, is lauded and given a seat of honour at Trump's inauguration. It's clear there are established links there.
5. Reddit - I don't know, but Steve Huffman has a /serious/ adoration of Elon Musk and is fond of money and power. If it's not already in the fold, it will be soon.

I'd put money on that we're already seeing left and anti-trump messages suppressed, and algorithms adjusted to promote division and discord - not just in the US, but globally. We'll be seeing platforms other than the above attacked and inflitrated constantly by bots and AI. We'll reach a point where you literally will be talking to yourself if you are against this. Your messages will just disappear to the point where you question your own reality. Shadowbanned online. Is Lemmy safe? No, not remotely. Decentralisation helps somewhat, but when the heavy guns are laying down suppressing fire from bot armies and destablising agendas - or even just being ruled illegal for some made-up reason, decentralisation doesn't allow you to fight.

Jim Morrison said, "“Whoever controls the media controls the mind. The media is the message and the message is me.”

The aim here is obvious, and it's not new. The method is just adjusted for modern day. And truth? Say goodbye to that sucker.

This is the equivalent of modern day book burning.

i can understand your confusion: actions speak louder than words; so break it down based on what they did (not what they said) to make it make sense:

1. trump tries to ban tiktok and fails
2. biden, democrats & republicans try to ban tiktok and they succeed
3. tiktok goes dark because it is banned
4. trump promises to issue an executive order to save tiktok and follows through
5. tiktok is back, but now has to depend on trump for its survival so it'll do whatever trump wants

Fascism from a technological and political perspective

You forgot step 1: Trump promises to ban TikTok.

~~TikTok wasn't ever actually banned.~~

A ban was signed into law. It had bipartisan support, though that may have been because it was tied in with aid for Ukraine. Biden appeared to have supported it initially but either after public backlash or them actually realizing what a massive fumble it was, Biden's administration said they would not enforce the ban and leave it to the Trump admins.

TikTok voluntarily shut down their servers, and gave users a super dickridey message about how Trump was going to save the platform. Less than 24 hours later, severs came back up with another dickridey message about how Trump promised to save their platform.

All of this happened before the inauguration.

Edit: im trying my best to make this as accurate as possible pls let me know if I fucked up.

That's authoritarianism for you! Welcome to the club! (I'm from Venezuela)

Uh the Supreme Court approved Biden’s ban that was initiated by Trump. Which is a nice way to make Biden less popular and come out as the saviour, plus TikTok will now lick Donnie’s boots. Someone was very smart, although I don’t think it was Trump himself.

One thing I’m convinced of is that the blackout was not the result of some technical requirement such as people’s speculation that it was for an algorithm change or to switch over to meta’s servers. It was either a messy result of their compliance department playing it safe or it was a political stunt. Likely a bit of both given how much money it must have cost. Regardless of what you believe about TikTok’s “true” nature, they’re playing ball with the Trump administration.

The narrative about TikTok being Trump’s propaganda wing may just be the newest tactic to paint leftists as fascists, though. Always be critical when legacy media is in lockstep.

There are rumors of Chinese regulators going after bytedance over unfair business practices in china. I think there is something to the whole affair we are not really seeing.

This is a classic mafia move. It will end with the mafia owning something that used to belong to someone else even though that person did not want to sell it.

One word:

Shenanigans

So tiktok is censoring criticism of Trump?

I kinda wanna check that for myself, cuz I find it hard to believe

Sounds like the management at Tiktok see it as politically expedient to fluff Trump to be able to continue to have access to the US market.

PR stunt

Uhhh I’m using TikTok with no VPN in the US and still get plenty of anti-Trump, pro-LGBT, left-leaning content. 🤷

TikTok definitely used the news hype to signal to Donald Trump that they will work with him — by giving him “credit” for making the app available again (even though he wasn’t president yet and didn’t do anything). It’s all propaganda from both the US and China.