Vladimir Putin finds ally in China’s TikTok in crackdown on critics
- The Kremlin approached Chinese authorities about anti-government content on the popular short video app earlier this year, according to an official
- Russian officials have praised TikTok for being more willing than some other companies to remove content
Mikhail Petrov’s TikTok posts started going viral this year when he tapped into growing discontent in Russia with bite-sized explanations of the country’s budding protest movement.
His popularity exploded to over 250,000 followers and TikTok invited Petrov, a political science student at the Higher School of Economics in St Petersburg, to join a talent development programme. Then the sound started disappearing from some of his videos.
The Kremlin approached Chinese authorities about anti-government content on TikTok earlier this year, according to an official familiar with Russia’s social media policy who asked not to be identified because the information is not public. The amount of critical content has declined as TikTok uses bans to weed out undesirable posts, the person said.
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“Russian regulators have been public that they’ve increased content removal requests since January, and takedowns have correspondingly increased industry-wide,” a TikTok spokesperson said. “We have made no changes to our policies. We continue to evaluate requests from government agencies.”