(Credit: Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
UPDATE 7 p.m. ET: TikTok says it's "continuing to resolve a major infrastructure issue triggered by a power outage at one of our US data center partner sites." The network is back online, it says, but "the outage caused a cascading systems failure that we've been working to resolve with our data center partner," TikTok USDS wrote on X.
In the interim, you might see slow load times and timeouts when scrolling or posting. Creators also might see zero views or likes on videos, while earnings might not be showing up. "This is a display error caused by server timeouts; your actual data and engagement are safe," it adds.
Original Story:
Soon after the Trump administration announced a deal for a US-led takeover of TikTok's US operations, the app started glitching; people had trouble uploading videos and saw old or repeating videos on their For You Page (FYP). This led them to speculate that TikTok's new owners were messing with the algorithm, but TikTok attributes the problems to a power outage.
"Since yesterday, we’ve been working to restore our services following a power outage at a US data center impacting TikTok and other apps we operate," the company posted this morning on a new X account for the US side of the business, dubbed TikTok USDS Joint Venture. "We're working with our data center partner to stabilize our service. We're sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon."
(Credit: Downdetector)Reports of TikTok trouble spiked on Downdetector starting around 3:30 a.m. ET on Sunday morning, with 36,000 reports in 15 minutes. Complaints have since declined, but not before Downdetector logged over 615,000 reports through this morning, with users primarily experiencing issues with the app and their FYPs.
According to posts across social media, users are experiencing various issues, including being unable to sign in, seeing older content in their feeds, not being able to view new videos, and not being able to post their own content. PCMag's social team tried to post a video over the weekend, but it was stuck in review mode for hours. Engagement numbers were also off; some videos reported no viewers but had likes.
The Verge noticed that some US accounts were also unable to see select videos that were viewable elsewhere around the world. It found that select videos from UK channels, such as the BBC and The Guardian, were unavailable in the US.
All this comes days after the social site's US operations were transferred to new owners to avoid a TikTok ban in the US. Three companies—Oracle, Silver Lake, and a state-owned AI investment firm from Abu Dhabi, MGX—each now own a 15% stake in the business. China-based ByteDance retains a 19.9% stake.
US-based TikTok users were then asked to accept an updated privacy policy. PCMag recommends reviewing the highlights to understand what has changed.
Given the unrest in Minneapolis, where social media videos have played a major role in getting the word out about ICE activity, including the shooting death of Alex Pretti this weekend, some speculated that TikTok was censoring content unfavorable to the administration. We'll have to see if this improves once the data center issue is fixed.
Disclosure: Downdetector is owned by PCMag parent company Ziff Davis.