California Governor Gavin Newsom accused TikTok on ‍Monday of suppressing content critical of President Donald Trump as he launched a review to decide if its content moderation practices violated state law, while the platform cited a systems failure.

Axar.az reports, citing Reuters, Newsom’s statement came after TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, last week finalized a deal to set up a majority US-owned joint venture that will secure US data, to ⁠avert a ban on the short video app used by more than 200 million Americans.

ByteDance said TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC would secure US user data, apps and algorithms through data privacy and cybersecurity measures, in a deal praised by Trump.

“Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports, and independently confirmed instances, of suppressed content critical of President Trump,” Newsom’s office said on X, without elaborating.

“Gavin Newsom is launching a review of this conduct and is calling on the California Department of Justice to determine whether it violates ‍California law,” it added.

In response, a TikTok representative pointed to a prior statement that blamed a data center power outage, adding, “It would be ‍inaccurate to report that this ‍is anything but the technical ⁠issues we’ve transparently confirmed.”

Users may notice bugs, slower load ‌times or timed-out requests when posting ⁠new content due to the impact ‍of the outage, the joint venture added.

“While the network has been recovered, the outage caused a cascading systems failure that we’ve ⁠been working to resolve,” it said in the statement on X posted before Newsom’s remarks.