NY DAILY NEWS - Sep 11 - TikTok admits to restricting some LGBTQ and political hashtags from users in countries including Russia, Jordan and Bosnia. Words such as "gay," "lesbian," and "transgender" were shadow-banned. "Shadow banning" refers to a type of censorship in which social media networks hide certain terms from searches without letting users know that the term is being banned - as opposed to completely removing a word or expression from the platform.