Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
TikTok videos about the Hollywood writers strike were temporarily blocked as the platform attempted to moderate QAnon conspiracy theories.
Media Matters for America, a nonprofit media research group, reported today that TikTok users were unable to search for content related to the Writers Guild of America strike. “WGA” and “WGA strike” didn’t return any search results on the app despite continuing waves of coverage of the writers and actors strikes. Within a few hours of MMFA’s report being published, the search results were restored and now appear to be working as usual.
TikTok confirmed that it accidentally blocked searches for the WGA strike content while attempting to block QAnon conspiracy theories; TikTok spokesperson Ben Rathe…