TikTok USA is broken – The Verge
TikTok in the US has had problems since early Sunday morning, which its new owners say are the result of a power outage.
TikTok in the US has had problems since early Sunday morning, which its new owners say are the result of a power outage.
TikTok has suffered from extensive problems on its first weekend after completing a transaction that changed the ownership of its US arm. According to Downdetector, the issues initially spiked in the early hours of Sunday morning, but many users, including editors here at The Verge, are still reporting errors.
On Monday morning, TikTok USDS head of communications Jamie Favazza responded to our inquiries, pointing to a post on a newly-created X account for the US joint venture that said its current issues are the result of a data center power outage.
Since yesterday we’ve been working to restore our services following a power outage at a U.S. data center impacting TikTok and other apps we operate. We’re working with our data center partner to stabilize our service. We’re sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon.
Many in the US have found it impossible to upload videos over the last day or so, which are sitting “under review” indefinitely. One video we uploaded from a US account last night has yet to go live, nearly 12 hours later, while a video uploaded from the UK is published — but it’s only visible to our editors who aren’t in the US. Similarly, accounts for pages like the BBC and The Guardian only show new uploads for those of us who live outside the US, while viewing the same account from the US shows only videos uploaded before Sunday morning.
Issues that thousands of people have reported and we’ve been able to confirm include difficulty logging in, the inability to upload or publish videos, a For You Page algorithm that isn’t personalized, problems loading comments, as well as errors flashing for other features, and problems with the CapCut video editor.
Given the timing, many drew a link between TikTok’s issues, its US operation’s new Trump-friendly owners, and this weekend’s anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis, exacerbated by the killing of a second local resident, Alex Pretti, by federal agents. The combination of publishing errors and previously political For You Pages that are suddenly filled with generic content has led many to assume the worst when their videos about ICE wouldn’t publish, but at the moment, the problems appear to be much more extensive.
As of last week, TikTok’s US operation is under the ownership of an investment consortium including Larry Ellison’s cloud giant Oracle, the solution to its long-threatened US ban. This has already led to the rollout of new terms of service for US users, which include noting the collection of precise location data and details of users’ AI interactions. The new owners also take control of US content moderation, which had sparked some to fear censorship even before this weekend’s issues, and say they will retrain the app’s algorithm based on US data.
Update, January 26th: Added more details on the ongoing issues and a response from TikTok USDS.
