Because they were involved in “covert influence operations” before the U.S. presidential election, TikTok deleted accounts that were linked to Russian state media.
The short-form video sharing site said on Monday that the changes affect accounts linked to TV-Novosti (the parent company of Russian state media RT) and Rossiya Segodnya (the company behind Kremlin news outlets RIA Novosti and Sputnik).
Even though Iran has hacked into both parties’ presidential campaigns this year, the U.S. Department of Justice says that Moscow is still the biggest threat to elections.
In the past few months, U.S. officials have used criminal charges, penalties, and public advisories to show what actions foreign enemies took to try to influence the election. For example, an indictment was filed against a Russian plot to secretly spread pro-Russian content to U.S. audiences.
Meta Platforms META -0.35%, the company that owns Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, said a week before that it had banned Rossiya Segodnya, RT, and other similar groups from its apps. This caused the Kremlin and the two media organizations to criticize the company.
On its website, TikTok said that TV-Novosti and Rossiya Segodnya accounts were already blocked in the UK and the EU, and they couldn’t show up in the app’s main “For You” feed.
Along with these changes, TikTok is also making some to its business.
In an unsigned message on its website, the company said that its music service, TikTok Music, would be shut down by November 28. The service, which started just two years ago, was offered in five countries, such as Australia and Brazil, which are both big markets. It wasn’t sold in the United States.
