Tracking Exposed: “On March 15, 2022, Tracking Exposed released a special report documenting our investigation into TikTok’s content restrictions in Russia, which was picked up by news outlets, such as The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Vice News, Le Monde, and WIRED Italia. It also gained substantial traction on Twitter.

Today we release a special 24 page report into TikTok’s activities in Russia. Our researchers exclusively discovered that TikTok has blocked an estimated 95% of content previously available to its 55 million users in Russia ~without announcing this move~ https://t.co/RbHGPlpQ0D pic.twitter.com/WcDKy5jlRQ — tracking.exposed (@trackingexposed) March 15, 2022

We found that on March 7, 2022, TikTok made all the content posted by non-Russian channels unavailable to Russian users. This unannounced restriction removes an estimated 95% of the content previously available to Russian TikTok users. The restriction is happening at the application layer rather than the transport layer, which requires the direct involvement of TikTok. It is the first time a global social media platform has restricted access to content at this scale. Not only this, but a network of coordinated accounts is using a loophole to post new content promoting Russian pro-war propaganda in Russia, despite the current ban on new content uploads.”