[zzzcpan]

It takes a lot to produce and push government propaganda. It would require a tech company to essentially turn into a government run news organization if they were to do it. Which kind of defeats the purpose of even having different businesses, rather than all of them being propaganda producing news outlets.

[giantrobot]

China's already got multiple overt state-run "news" organizations. So it's not like there's some dearth of China-friendly content readily available. Propaganda also isn't necessarily just content produced by some Ministry of Truth. Simply censoring or "discouraging" negative coverage of China/CCP in state influenced media can be/is propaganda.

That's just "official" propaganda. The CCP's various astroturfing brigades are well documented (see "50 cent army" and "internet navy"). They show up in public forums of all stripes.

TikTok doesn't allow discussion of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Falun Gong, Free Tibet, or anything other topics the CCP deems inappropriate. That censorship is propaganda by omission. Content users see being primary algorithmic makes it trivial to add in pro-CCP or just anti-West content into people's feeds.