Users on TikTok searching for “WGA” are met with a screen claiming that the phrase “may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines.” No videos return. Users are also unable to search for the “WGA” hashtag.

TikTok has also blocked the search term “WGA strike.”

Additionally, it appears that TikTok is blocking results from any simple search that includes “WGA” in the search term. Including “WGA” in addition to another word — like “WGA support” or “WGA strong” — blocks results.

Update (9/11/23): A TikTok spokesperson told Media Matters that “WGA has been inadvertently blocked as part of the platforms’ protections against QAnon conspiracy theories.” (WWG1WGA is a common QAnon phrase.) The spokesperson added that searches for “Writers Guild of America” and “Writers Guild of America Strike” were not impacted. Searches for “WGA” and related terms now appear to function normally.

(Thanks mike591, SCB, crowsby, and others for putting in the comments)

164 points

Yet another demonstration of the dangers of allowing a communication channel to be controlled by an entity whose motives aren’t aligned with what the users of that channel actually want / need.

Fediverse is the best collective action I can think of against this kind of censorship.

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34 points

It’s been wild over the last few years to see authoritarians cheering on corporate social media censorship, as though it will never be turned on them.

Fuck censorship.

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3 points

Why would it turn against them? It aligns perfectly with their ideology.

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5 points

Fediverse is the best collective action I can think of against this kind of censorship.

The ideal if the Fediverse, yes. The reality of it, with Lemmy in particular, is that we have admins with the power to censor or curate as they wish, and while they may not be able to censor the entire fediverse, if they control a large chunk of it, it still has an effect on what users can see.

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3 points

It’s not perfect, but I’m beginning to think it’s the best we will get. It’s probably the best we deserve. So many instances immediately turned into r/Politics. Proving that it wasn’t Reddit which was infested with brain rot. It’s the users.

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2 points

The CCP has a more active presence on Lemmy than TikTok

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2 points

The CCP controls the entirety of TikTok. Here you might have some instances controlled by tankies and a higher percentage of tankie users, but the vast majority of instances are managed by “normal” people.

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1 point

Oh but didn’t you hear? China is a paradise for workers and definitely not capitalist in any way

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138 points

Update (9/11/23): A TikTok spokesperson told Media Matters that “WGA has been inadvertently blocked as part of the platforms’ protections against QAnon conspiracy theories.” Searches for “WGA” and related terms now appear to function normally.

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74 points

For those fortunate enough to be out of the loop, one of the qanon catch phrases is “Where we go one we go all” which is some bastardized version of the three musketeers “all for one, one for all.” It’s often abbreviated as WWGOWGA, which you’ll see on bumper stickers to helpfully let you know the driver has completely lost touch of reality so you should give them plenty of space. I’ve never seen it shortened to WGA, but that is plausible.

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36 points

You left out the best part, which is like 90% of QAnon shit, they stole it from a movie. This is from the movie “White Squall.”

QAnon people are fucking crazy man. How does anyone fall for this shit?

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14 points

Because we have a cultic milieu and it’s an extremely syncretic conspiracy theory. Never quite got past the satanic panic? Q is fighting the Satanists who made rent too damn high. Think aliens control the government? They’re working with the Satanists but they’re on the beat of ensuring your kids disagree with you after going to college. Aware that the rich are the enemy? Trump is secretly at war with the elites. Just a massive fucking bigot? Who do you think the elites are? No seriously you can copy and paste the group you hate in there, it could be anyone that isn’t a majority, they could be redheads for all Q cares.

Qanon has absorbed everything from the new world order (alien edition, but also the other ones too) to flat earth to satanic panic to NESARA to the fucking protocols of the elders of Zion and cultural Bolshevism (though they call it cultural Marxism but still blame Jews). These are all things that used to get you laughed out of a room if not beaten up but now there’s an audience who will “yes and” the most deluded bullshit you can imagine.

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5 points

A lack of critical thinking skills.

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3 points

I dunno they need to be thrown in wards or something. It’s like many of our parents and entire families infected by the Qanon.

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-2 points

Fetal alcohol syndrome.

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13 points

They probably used some bad RegEx like ^.*WGA$ because the QAnon people swap the “O” out for a “1” sometimes and the dev tasked with blocking QAnon shit was like, “Fuck it. I’m blocking it all.”

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25 points

Ok yeah accidentally mistaking it for an abbreviation of wwg1wga makes sense actually

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5 points

wwg1wga

Huh, what a terrible initialism.

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19 points

Well that’s good

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9 points

This is good to know and I’m glad to hear.

As an aside, do we have a system for OP to pin this comment to the top? This context is pretty important.

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4 points

riiiight

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2 points

The spokesperson added that searches for “Writers Guild of America” and “Writers Guild of America Strike” were not impacted.

Ok, if that’s true I can believe that.

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-7 points

BULLSHIT. China doesn’t want their citizens witnessing workforce strikes; especially ones where the celebrities striking are on Chinese TVs and movie screens.

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11 points

Do you legitimately think people in China see the same Tiktok that we do?

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6 points

Chinese people aren’t on TikTok.

They’re on Douyin and sand boxed away from any of that Western democracy and freedom concepts.

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-1 points

freedom concepts

Thats funny, There are no concepts of freedom in the US unless you are wealthy

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84 points

Reminder: China isn’t communist - it somehow cares about worker enfranchisement even less than the US.

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-25 points

Reminder: America isn’t a capitalist country because there are antitrust laws.

/s

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-45 points

TikTok is a product from a private company called ByteDance.

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56 points

I’m well aware - they approached me with a lucrative job offer years ago, which I declined because I knew who they were.

Are you so naiive as to imagine that a major social media platform headquartered in Beijing is not censoring content at the direction of the CCP when there’s multiple, credible sources pointing to collusion between them?

TikTok executive refuses Jake Tapper’s multiple requests to acknowledge China’s treatment of Uyghurs

TikTok’s owner is helping China’s campaign of repression in Xinjiang, report finds

Xinjiang’s TikTok wipes away evidence of Uyghur persecution

Exclusive: ByteDance censored anti-China content in Indonesia until mid-2020

Revealed: how TikTok censors videos that do not please Beijing

Here’s the TikTok CEO addressing Congress as it relates to their management of US data.

I wonder if you’ll:

  • Engage the point (to fight a losing battle),

  • Pivot to whataboutism and American diabolism that fails to engage the point, or

  • Do the smartest thing under the circumstances (assuming you’re incapable of learning) and quietly skulk away.

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25 points

Jesus Christ he’s dead bro leave ‘em now! 😂

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-3 points

Of course ByteDance is influenced by its government, every company is. And to more of an extent in China, because China is governed by a communist-inspired party who seeks to crush bourgeois influence.

My point is that this instance is much more likely an example of ByteDance doing pretty normal, if stupid, private company things. Hell, TikTok itself doesn’t even exist in China. They do have a very similar sister app, Doiyin, but operations between the two are ultimately separate.

According to the article in the post, this suppression of the writer’s strike was related to its effort to remove QAnon-related content from the platform. Apparently some QAnon acronym has WGA in it, and sure, you can dismiss that statement as deflection, and I wouldn’t fault you for it. But then I raise this question:

What does China stand to gain suppressing information about a strike in the US?

It doesn’t help anyone here be more pro-communist, if anything they would push pro-union content for that. China’s image isn’t being emboldened in the US for this, as your comment clearly shows it makes it worse. It makes far more sense for TikTok’s US operations to be suppressing pro-union information, whether at the request of other companies or their own enrichment. But even then, that would easily be spotted and called out, as it did even still. I believe China has far more to gain with its existing spy operations and suppression of internal affairs such as Xinjiang than it does with a labor strike in an entirely sifferent country that its own citizens likely have little, if any, knowledge about.

I don’t like China’s government, by the way. The reason I say all this isn’t to defend them, the reason I do it is because people tend to blame all of Chinese companies’ bad decisions on China itself instead of the companies. Intentionally or not, it absolves the companies of wrongdoing and puts it on China. While China obviously deserves plenty of criticism, from people of all ideologies, this situation just isn’t relevant to that discussion. I also suspect the mass panic surrounding Chinese influence is in no insignificant part manufactured to make the US populace okay with going to war over Taiwan. This isn’t anything new, remember Iraq’s WMDs? I want people to focus on fixing our own, very significant issues, here at home before turning attention overseas. This applies to other countries too but that’s out of scope for this discussion.

That being said, you’re right, I’m not going to continue. Not because I’m not interested in good faith discussion, as my wall of text implies, but because you straight up insulted me and that’s a dick move. My comment might have sounded stern, and I apologize for not clarifying my tone, but you didn’t need to go full Reddit warrior at the end of your comment either. To assume you’d “win” a discussion, instead of engaging to learn the other side, is pathetic and insulting.

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-5 points

The Uyghur thing is red scare propaganda bullshit along the same lines as ‘Free Tibet’

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24 points

Companies in China have to fully comply with anything the government wants. It may be a private company but that doesn’t mean they can refuse the government like US companies can.

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47 points

My guess is that the studios and/or right-wing trolls reported WGA posts as abuse, and “the algorithm” did the rest.

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17 points

Yep. Another problem with allowing content to be spoon-fed to us by The Algorithm.

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4 points

Yeah my algo plays a fair amount of WGA content.

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27 points

Hmm. How will I hack my Windows XP to activate it if I can’t search for Windows Genuine Advantage?

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11 points

I miss the good ’ ol FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXRKT-8TG6W-2B7Q8 days.

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1 point

I wouldn’t be surprised if that was off the top of your head.

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1 point

Only the first five characters

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1 point

I still know my old XP VLK.

CM3HY-26VYW-…

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2 points
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