[tripletao]

That's a policy decision by the Chinese government. They still have the authority, but the Streisand effect makes blunt censorship counterproductive in an open society. For example, TikTok took down the viral "Uighur makeup tutorial" but quickly reinstated it after the backlash. That backlash couldn't occur in China, but it can in the USA for as long as uncensored outlets exist.

Subtler manipulation still works great, and the opacity of algorithmic content recommendation makes that an ideal instrument. Nobody outside ByteDance knows to what extent the CCP is putting its thumb on that scale already, but they certainly have the power to.

[throw283724]

If we're talking about the same video, the reason they initially took it down is because she had pictures of Bin Laden and was praising him.

[tripletao]

I'm talking about this one:

https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/an-update-on-recent-conten...

A different account operated by the same user was banned for something relating to an image of bin Laden in a different video. I've been unable to locate that video. I haven't found any reference stating that she praised him. She described her use of that image as satirical, and TikTok itself seems to recognize that (but stands by that ban):

> *While we recognize that this video may have been intended as satire, our policies on this front are currently strict.

In any case, the video in question is the Uighur one. TikTok quickly stated that one was a "human moderation error" and reversed it. My point is irrespective of whether their rules were morally correct or correctly applied, though--whatever those merits, they clearly drew more attention to the topic by censoring here, not less. So it's not surprising they don't apply blunt Chinese-style censorship outside China, since it's counterproductive without Chinese-style control of all major media.