If you want to delete your TikTok account, there are a few different ways to go about it. The first option is to go to the app’s main menu and select “Settings.” From here, you can scroll down until you see “Accounts” and click on it. You will then be able to select which account you want to delete and hit the “Delete Account” button. If you don’t want to delete your entire account, but just some of the videos that are on it, you can also go directly to the videos that you want to delete by opening them up in the app and selecting “Delete Video.” Once you have selected the videos that you want to delete, hit the “Delete Video” button and they will be gone from your account. ..

On January 30, a 23-year-old Chinese gay rights activist living in the United States named Hua Haidi awoke to find that his TikTok account had been deleted. A day later he discovered that his Weibo and other social media accounts had been scrubbed of all content. Over the following weeks, over 100 online personalities were targeted by censors–many of them LGBTQ activists who had written articles about their personal lives for English language publications such as The Guardian or BuzzFeed News. Some of them had not posted anything directly related to LGBTQ issues on TikTok or on their censored Webs at all. This is what appears to have placed them on China’s blacklist; an official list of “sensitive words” such as “gay” or “human rights” has not been shared with the public.

Why is China doing this? The Chinese government commonly uses censorship to control or punish dissent, but it rarely does so on such a wide scale and in such a coordinated fashion. In this case, the most likely explanation is that China’s top leaders were rattled by images of Hong Kong citizens protesting for their civil liberties last fall and wanted to make an example of those who expressed support for them online. Politically sensitive messages had also begun to emerge in these Weibo accounts: They included calls for freedom of speech, democracy, political self-determination for Taiwan (a territory which Beijing claims should be reunited with the mainland), human rights, and freedom for the persecuted Uighurs. The two issues–LGBTQ rights and support for Hong Kong protesters–were conflated in these accounts’ messages.

Like so much else about China, however, the country’s actions can seem contradictory or simply nonsensical to those outside of it. China has invested heavily in its movie star culture over the past decade; stars are even given awards by state-run media companies–yet now the government is cracking down on online celebrities with many followers who write about personal topics such as their sexuality or their belief they have been reincarnated as a rainbow unicorn (yes really). Meanwhile, there’s an image that must be protected: Chinese leaders are promoting “Confucian values” in response to the country’s declining birth rate, and they believe that LGBTQ people are morally corrupting.

China has long suppressed Chinese citizens who identify as gay using language that suggests it is a mental illness–a position shared with the Chinese Psychiatric Association (which since removed homosexuality from its list of illnesses in 2001). In 2015, six films made by directors associated with the independent Beijing Film Academy were banned after scholars there released an open letter supporting LGBT rights. There are no openly LGBTQ government officials or business executives in China; civil society groups have been silenced, and teachers are required to teach “family values” and eschew material that would “promote Western views of sexuality.” Gay marriage is illegal. The Chinese government has also sought to bar the media from mentioning LGBTQ issues and, of course, banned same-sex marriage ceremonies from taking place.

The state’s homophobia is complemented by a society that strongly discourages open discussion of sex and sexuality in general–as well as discussions about sexual identity (particularly when it comes to women). Yet while many Chinese remain ignorant or dismissive of notions like homosexuality or bisexuality, others openly rebel against the censorship; some even find ways to subvert it by using clouds of “eggplant emojis” for censored keywords.