Mark Zuckerberg says the real threat is TikTok and China

In case it wasn't clear already, Mark Zuckerberg really isn't a fan of TikTok.

During a speech at Georgetown University, the Facebook CEO had some forceful criticism for rival app TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance.

"While our services, like WhatsApp, are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these protests are censored, even in the U.S.," Zuckerberg said. "Is that the internet we want?"

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China, Zuckerberg warned, "is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries."

"Until recently, the internet in almost every country outside China has been defined by American platforms with strong free expression values," he said. "There’s no guarantee these values will win out. A decade ago, almost all of the major internet platforms were American. Today, six of the top ten are Chinese."

In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson denied that the Chinese government has a role in the app's content policies.

Our content and moderation policies are led by our US-based team and are not influenced by any foreign government. The Chinese government does not request that TikTok censor content, and would not have jurisdiction regardless, as TikTok does not operate there. To be clear: We do not remove videos based on the presence of Hong Kong protest content.

Lawmakers and other have accused the company of censorship. Earlier this year, The Guardian reported on internal documents that instructed TikTok's content moderators to censor videos that mention topics likely to anger the Chinese government. This week, TikTok announced it was hiring an outside law firm to review its content moderation policies and increase transparency.

Zuckerberg, who has been increasingly vocal about the threat posed by Chinese tech giants, also seemed to suggest that his company is no longer working to get a foothold in China, where Facebook has been banned since 2009.

"I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world and I thought we might help create a more open society," he said. "I worked hard to make this happen. But we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there, and they never let us in. And now we have more freedom to speak out and stand up for the values we believe in and fight for free expression around the world."

In a question and answer session following his speech, the Facebook CEO also cited data localization as a major concern as it could help authoritarian governments improperly access user data.

The comments represent a big reversal for Zuckerberg. For years, he and other Facebook execs deflected questions about the company's strategy to bring Facebook to China. Zuckerberg famously learned to speak Mandarin, and proudly shared photos of himself jogging in Beijing amid hazardous air quality in an event that became known as his "smog jog."

Behind the scenes, Facebook was also reportedly working on a "censorship tool" aimed at China, the New York Times reported in 2016.

But more recently, Zuckerberg has made clear his views on China have shifted. The CEO has told lawmakers that breaking up Facebook could cause Chinese tech companies to become even more powerful.

Some Zuckerberg critics immediately criticized his seeming about-face on China. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who has been a vocal critic of Facebook, said that in his conversations with Facebook's founder, Zuckerberg spoke very differently about China.

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"He told me in our meeting when I asked about Chinese censorship that Facebook 'always complies with local laws,' and offered this as explanation for why FB was ready to censor in Chinese mkt," Hawley tweeted. "Zuck went on to compare Chinese censorship rules on Tiananmen & Uyghurs to Germany’s rules against Holocaust denial. Both just “local laws,” he said. Interesting way to advocate free speech."

Updated with comments from Sen. Josh Hawley.