After TikTok was sold to a cabal of Trump’s buddies and donors, users say their posts criticizing ICE or mentioning the Epstein scandal are being buried with zero views, and now Gavin Newsom says the state will investigate.

On Thursday, the Chinese-owned social video app TikTok was sold to a group of Donald Trump campaign donors and allies, including Trump donors Michael Dell and Larry Ellison’s Oracle. Come Monday morning, after ICE shot and killed that guy in Minneapolis, a slew of TikTok users (including our state Senator Scott Wiener) claimed that TikTok was throttling their posts criticizing ICE. And by Tuesday morning, California Governor Gavin Newsom was vowing to launch an investigation of whether Trump’s wealthy tech buddies were censoring TikTok to Trump's advantage.

The issue exploded into the public consciousness Monday morning when Hacks star and TikTok personality Megan Stalter claimed TikTok was censoring her anti-ICE video. “I've tried for hours to upload the same video and it wouldn't show it to one person,” she declared on Instagram. “♥️ABOLISH ICE! Delete TikTok!”

Who should wade into this mess hours later but our own state Senator Scott Wiener, who uploaded his own video critical of ICE, as KRON4 reports. “TikTok is now state-controlled media,” Wiener posted to Xitter Monday afternoon. “This morning I posted a TikTok about my legislation allowing people to sue ICE agents. It's sitting at zero views, and I'm not the only person this is happening to.”

Is Wiener full of shit? It seems not! As seen in the above screenshot from Wiener’s account, his video critical of ICE is no longer stuck at zero views. But it’s got substantially fewer views than Wiener’s other recently posted videos.

Other users agreed that their anti-ICE video had been censored. And also Monday morning, TikTok users reported their posts with the word “Epstein” would pull up an “in violation of our Community Guidelines" warning. That’s when California Governor Gavin Newsom entered the chat.

“Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports — and independently confirmed instances — of suppressed content critical of President Trump,” Newsom’s office tweeted early Monday night. “Gavin Newsom is launching a review of this conduct and is calling on the California Department of Justice to determine whether it violates California law.”

TikTok, of course, has their own seemingly innocent-sounding explanation. The app’s new US ownership said on Monday that they were “working to restore our services following a power outage at a U.S. data center." Later in the day, they added, “"Creators may temporarily see '0' views or likes on videos, and your earnings may look like they're missing. This is a display error caused by server timeouts; your actual data and engagement are safe.”

Did Newsom jump into this TikTok controversy to help his frequent ally Scott Wiener? Probably not. Did Newsom jump into this TikTok controversy in hopes of courting the youth/TikTok vote for his inevitable 2028 run for president. Oh almost certainly, yes.

And there is a legitimate grievance here, as the new right-wing US billionaire TikTok owners have at worst engaged in outright censorship, and at best shown themselves to be vastly more technically incompetent than their predecessor Chinese owners. So TikTok will likely be an easy punching bag in the 2028 presidential election. In fact, it might already be.

Related: Trump Trying to Sell TikTok to His Buddies at Oracle and Andreessen Horowitz [SFist]

Image: solenfeyissa via Unsplash