Putin Finds Ally in China’s TikTok in Crackdown on Critics
- TikTok users complain that critical videos have disappeared
- Russia is cracking down on tech firms amid wave of protests
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Mikhail Petrov’s TikTok posts started going viral this year when he tapped into growing discontent in Russia with bite-sized explanations of the country’s budding protest movement.
His popularity exploded to over 250,000 followers and TikTok invited Petrov, a political science student at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, to join a talent development program. Then the sound started disappearing from some of his videos.