Conservative content creators are sounding alarms, claiming that TikTok is systematically taking down and demonetizing their videos ahead of the midterms.
“I basically know every single video will be removed before I even press upload, so I miss out on creator funds and the ability to reach larger audiences,” Chloe Trapanotto (@itsallpolitics), who has nearly 500,000 followers on the platform, told The Post.
She said it started with an Aug. 12 video calling out the “new left,” in which she directly quoted Hasan Piker — including his remark that “America deserved 9/11.” She also noted Francesca Hong’s anti-Thanksgiving stance. The video is still live on other platforms like Instagram but was removed from TikTok within minutes.
Since then, almost 80% of her videos have been flagged, the 24-year-old claimed.
Meanwhile, on Aug. 29, Nate Friedman (@natefriedman), an independent digital journalist, posted his latest documentary video, “The Islamic takeover of Manhattan,” to his nearly 2 million followers across various platforms.
The doc features interviews with dozens of religious community members and nearby residents. There are local Imams saying people should be fine hearing the calls to prayer and neighbors saying the area had become a “no go zone.”
It quickly hit 1.5 million views on TikTok as the social media giant ran ads against it. But, by Sept. 1, Friedman said, the video had been pulled for “community guidelines.”
“They rejected my appeal and just cited ‘community guidelines.’ This is something I’ve dealt with constantly since the app’s inception,” he told The Post. “I simply can’t post on TikTok without being worried that it will be taken down — my last three documentaries have all been censored or banned,”
Xaviaer DuRousseau (@xaviaer), is a 29-year-old conservative commentator based in Beverly Hills who regularly discusses politics and culture and has nearly three million followers across TikTok, Instagram, and X.
He said several of his videos were taken down for hate speech, including one discussing a Jesse Watters interview in which El-Sayed likened circumcision to gender transition in children. Another of his videos, which sought to explain why Asians have become so successful, was also removed even though it remained up without issue on other platforms.
DuRousseau has been in contact with Trump administration officials and is arranging a meeting with Vice President Vance to address his concerns. He’s pushing to address the issue well before the 2028 presidential election cycle heats up.
He also recently teamed up with Friedman and another conservative creator, Avery Daye (@Avery.daye), to send a letter to TikTok outlining their concerns.
Daye, who has more than 550,000 followers across platforms told The Post that she has completely given up on using TikTok because of the constant de-platforming.
“I have been through so many TikTok accounts I can’t remember them all,” she said. “I would grow 100k-plus followers in a few months and then my account would get banned. I’d receive strikes citing misinformation when there wasn’t any, election integrity on videos that had nothing to do with elections, and hate speech if I criticized any protected group.”
In their letter, the three noted that the affected creators represent as much as 20 billion-plus combined reach, according to a compilation shared with The Post. It also claimed that the situation has intensified lately.
“After President Trump acted to keep the app operating in the United States [in 2025], conditions improved for a period. Conservative creators could speak plainly, grow, and have impact — even though the platform still applied heavier restrictions than competing apps and often appeared to favor left-leaning viewpoints,” it reads. “Unfortunately, that window has closed. In recent months, the algorithm and guidelines enforcement have become aggressive, targeted, and unpredictable.”
In 2025, President Trump said he had “a warm spot” for TikTok and that it “helped get me elected.” He issued an executive order that allowed TikTok to work around a law that would have required Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest the asset or get banned.
TikTok was ultimately moved into a new vehicle called TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC. While the new entity is supposed to control data protection, algorithm security, and content moderation, questions remain about how complete the split actually is, given ByteDance still holds nearly a fifth of the venture.
Some voices on the left have also claimed to have been censored on TikTok. The platform did not respond to a request for comment.
Among adults under 30, 43% regularly get news on TikTok — making it the leading social media app for news in that age group, ahead of YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.
If things continue as they are on TikTok going into the elections, Friedman thinks the implications could be dire:”TikTok has an estimated 170 million users in the US, that’s more than half the country so it’s not out of the question that we lose our country over this censorship.”
