Tiktok has shaken his advisory advice on American content, adding new voices that take charge of large freedom protections and criticized government pressure on online platforms.
The council of eight people, trained in 2020, means that independent experts on technology and security to advise Tiktok policies concerning child protection, hatred speech, disinformation and intimidation.
The reshuffle added three new members, including two with libertarian or conservative history. The three members who left the Council brought expertise in technological policy, technological ethics and political communication.
The change seems to have taken place in the past two months. According to The Wayback Machine, an internet archive tool, a previous version of the page listing the old members was live as recently as Mars.
One of the new members is David Inserra, a scholarship holder for freedom of expression and technology at the Cato Institute, a libertarian reflection group.
According to his biography, he is looking for problems such as “online content policies and moderation, and harmful impacts of censorship on individuals, businesses, technology and society”. In a Cato blog article in 2024 that he co-author, Inserra argued that “the first amendment protects the disinformation and the speech of hatred”.
Inserra previously spent almost eight years at the Heritage Foundation as a political analyst focused on internal security and political cyber. In 2023 – After Inserra Gaut – The Heritage Foundation published the 2025 project, a conservative policy of more than 900 pages which includes proposals aimed at eliminating the Ministry of Education and restricting federal efforts to combat disinformation. On LinkedIn, he describes himself as a “defender of freedom of expression online”.
Corbin Barthold, Internet policy advisor and director of call disputes at TechFreEdom, also joined the Council. TechFreEdom is a libertarian reflection group focused on technological policy.
Barthold criticized the policies of the Trump administration and was frank against efforts to prohibit Tiktok, in particular the justification of national security behind it. In a January article on X, he wrote: “” National security “in this context is the code of” fear of speech “.”
The third new member is Desmond Upton Patton, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and founding director of the SAFELAB Research Initiative. His work focuses on how social media affects mental health, trauma, sorrow and violence, especially for young people and adults.
Tiktok, Barthold and Patton did not respond to the requests for bi comments. Inserra was not immediately available to comment.
On his website, Tiktok affirms that the Council “represents a diversified range of horizons and prospects” and includes experts in the security of young people, free expression, speech of hatred and other security problems.
The company adds that the Council helps to enlighten its policies, its characteristics of the products and its security processes, declaring: “We work to guarantee that our policies and processes are informed by a diversity of perspectives, expertise and lived experiences.”
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It’s not just Tiktok
The reshuffle of the Tiktok council follows recent movements of other social platforms to crop their approaches to freedom of expression and moderation of the content, in particular under an increased political examination.
In January, META replaced its third -party fact verification program in the United States with a system of community notes modeled after that used by Elon Musk’s X – a change that many observers considered as a political repositioning.
This same month, Meta appointed the CEO of the UFC and Donald Trump Ally Dana White for a long time on his board of directors.
Like Meta and X, Tiktok is testing more transparent alternatives to content withdrawals. In April, Tiktok began to pilot “foot notes”, a tool that allows eligible users to add a clarification context under videos without removing them.
The functionality is tested in the United States and will operate alongside the existing partnerships of Tiktok with its network of verification of existing facts.
The future of Tiktok in the United States has remained uncertain since April 2024, when the Congress adopted a law obliging the bypass to yield its American operations or to face a national ban.
Trump, who once pushed Tiktok, told NBC Meet The Press earlier this month that he had a “warm place in his heart” for the application, and suggested that he could grant another extension if the company does not find a buyer before the revised deadline of June 19.
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