California Governor Gavin Newsom has accused TikTok of suppressing content critical of President Donald Trump, as he launched a review of the platform’s content moderation practices to determine whether they breach state law.
The announcement came as TikTok’s new US ownership structure was finalised, with the company’s Chinese owner ByteDance saying it had completed a deal to establish a majority US-owned joint venture.
The move is intended to secure US user data and avoid a potential ban on the popular short-video app, which has more than 200 million American users.
Newsom’s office said on X on Monday that it had received reports, and independently confirmed instances of content critical of Trump being suppressed following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group.
The statement did not provide further details or examples.
It added that Newsom had launched a review of the conduct and had called on the California Department of Justice to determine whether it violates state law.
TikTok’s new US joint venture responded by attributing the issues to a technical failure. A representative for the venture pointed to an earlier statement blaming a data-centre power outage, and said it would be inaccurate to characterise the problems as anything other than technical.
The joint venture said users might experience bugs, slower load times or timed-out requests when posting new content as a result of the outage.
“While the network has been recovered, the outage caused a cascading systems failure that we’ve been working to resolve,” it said in an online statement issued before Newsom’s remarks.
The governor, a Democrat, and Trump, a Republican, have long been critical of one another. Newsom’s accusation follows reports from several TikTok users who said their posts were being censored or behaving abnormally.
Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck said a video he recorded about reports that federal immigration officers could enter homes without a judge’s warrant had been placed “under review”.
Casey Fiesler, a technology ethics and internet law expert at the University of Colorado, told CNN that the lack of trust in TikTok’s new ownership was “not surprising”. She said she had experienced problems uploading videos referencing an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis.
Last week’s deal marked a major milestone for TikTok after years of disputes with the US government over national security and privacy concerns, raised under both Trump and President Joe Biden.
ByteDance said the newly formed TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC would secure US user data, apps and algorithms through data privacy and cybersecurity measures.
The agreement has been praised by Trump, who has credited TikTok with helping him win the 2024 election. Trump has more than 16 million followers on his personal TikTok account.
The deal gives American and global investors an 80.1% stake in the joint venture, while ByteDance retains 19.9%.
Each of the venture’s three managing investors; Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX will hold a 15% stake.
A White House official said the US and Chinese governments had signed off on the agreement.
