Megan Stalter alleges that TikTok is censoring her content criticizing ICE, and is urging followers to delete the app.
The Hacks actress, 35, is no stranger to voicing her political opinions on social media, interviews, and red carpets. Stalter used the app to post about the heartbreaking death of nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti, who was killed by a US Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis on Saturday.
“I’ve tried for hours to upload the same video and it wouldn’t show it to one person,” Stalter wrote on Instagram. She shared a screen recording of her TikTok post, which was a lengthy statement about the killing. The post had received zero likes and comments. Stalter had about 278,000 followers on the app.
Stalter continued in her Instagram caption, writing, “ABOLISH ICE! Delete TikTok!”
The Too Much star’s sentiment was echoed by Grammy-winning producer Finneas O’Connell, who said his video about ICE shooting Pretti was being shadowbanned by TikTok. O’Connell commented on Stalter’s post on Instagram, writing, “Same experience today.”
Queer Eye’s Bobby Berk said similarly, writing in the comments, “Same girl, same. Been trying to delete all day, but it keeps ‘freezing.’”
In her Instagram statement, the actress said TikTok’s new ownership has led to greater censorship. “TT is under new ownership and we are being completely censored and monitored,” she said.
The allegations that TikTok is shadowbanning political content come days after the US government finally reached an agreement with the app, effectively ending its longstanding threats to ban it.
On Jan. 22, TikTok signed a deal with major investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX, forming a new TikTok US joint venture. The investors are known to be Trump allies, like Oracle’s billionaire co-founder Larry Ellison.
The TikTok US venture will operate “under defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurances for U.S. users,” the app said in a statement.
Trump gloated about the news of the TikTok deal on his own social platform, Truth Social, thanking Vice President JD Vance and China’s President Xi Jinping. He wrote that he is “so happy” that the app has been saved and that it “will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors.”
According to TikTok, its new U.S. joint venture will “safeguard” the content available in the country. The app will do so through “robust trust and safety policies and content moderation while ensuring continuous accountability through transparency reporting and third-party certifications,” the company said in its statement.
The years-long conflict between TikTok and the US was spurred by a 2024 bipartisan bill that would have banned TikTok unless its owner, the Chinese company ByteDance, sold the app to an American company.
Allegations about censorship and content moderation have risen in the few days since the deal was struck. So far, it is unclear how drastically the app’s algorithms will adjust, but experts are already suggesting that certain content can be easily suppressed under TikTok’s new leadership.
After criticism about content suppression in the wake of another ICE killing mounted, the new TikTok joint venture released a statement on X blaming a “power outage at a U.S. data center.”
In September, when Trump signed an executive order facilitating the TikTok deal, the president joked that the app would go MAGA.
“If I could make it 100% MAGA, I would, but it’s not going to work out that way, unfortunately,” Trump said. “No, everyone’s going to be treated fairly. Every group, every philosophy, every policy will be treated very fairly.”
