TikTok Blames Power Outage for US Service Problems

TikTok says a power outage is behind the ongoing disruptions and service outages that began in the U.S. early Sunday morning. TikTok confirmed that it was at a US-based data centre that affected US users in the early hours of Sunday. A “cascading systems failure” caused by the interruption affected video feeds, uploads, and engagement metrics. The technical failure coincided with TikTok’s ownership transition, and this also led users to question whether videos criticising ICE raids in Minnesota were being intentionally censored.

TikTok USDS spokesperson Jamie Favazza cited a statement made to the joint venture’s recently established X account in an email to The Verge, stating that the business has been “working to restore our services following a power outage at a U.S. data centre impacting TikTok and other apps we operate.”

Many US users, including some friends, had reported on Sunday that they were unable to upload films to TikTok or view the majority of newly uploaded videos, including those that were successfully published by users outside of the US. Others reported that their algorithm seemed to “reset”; however, it’s unclear if this is connected to the power loss as well.

Last week, TikTok in the US was taken over by a new joint venture led by Oracle and a group of Trump-friendly investors, sparking worries about privacy and censorship. Oracle-owned data centres, which are also expected to house a new version of TikTok’s algorithm educated on US user activity, are where TikTok USDS pledges to send user data.

According to TikTok USDS’s comment, “We’re working with our data centre partner to stabilise our service.” “We apologise for the inconvenience and hope to find a quick solution.” The business doesn’t say if the outage happened at one of Oracle’s data centres or if it had anything to do with the severe snowstorm that hit most of the US over the weekend.

The outage details caused TikTok’s new US entity, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, to attribute the failure to a power outage at a partner data centre, which was tied to severe winter weather affecting regional power grids.

According to reports from user issues, Downdetector reports peaked at over 36,000 complaints. Users reported “0 views” on new posts, “For You” feeds showing outdated or repeated content, and an inability to log in or upload videos.

Late on Sunday, the recovery status was that the network was declared “recovered”, but the business cautioned that while they tried to stabilise the service, there would still be “cascading” issues, longer load times, and display errors.

In order to escape a federal ban, TikTok finalised a deal on January 22 to transition and move its US operations to a new business supported by investors including Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. The outage happened a few days later.

Censorship allegations, according to some users, it was conjectured that the “broken” app was the consequence of deliberate censorship by the new US government because the outage occurred around significant news events (such as riots in Minneapolis). Jamie Favazza, TikTok’s head of communications, refuted these allegations, claiming the problems were only technical.

The infrastructure shift, according to analysts, is speculated to have caused the platform’s initial instability, which entails transferring US user data to Oracle’s cloud servers and “retraining” the algorithm on US data.