After a Disastrous First Week, TikTok US Says its Service is Restored

TikTok, which is under new ownership in the U.S., says that its service has been restored after the app was beset with week-long technical problems and user complaints.

On Sunday, the company announced that it had fully resolved a data center outage that caused widespread disruptions across the platform in the U.S. TikTok, which has more than 220 million U.S. users, says the problems stemmed from an incident at an Oracle-operated facility that supports its American operations.

In a post on X, TikTok says a snowstorm last week triggered the outage. The company explains that this weather incident led to power failures at the data center, which in turn caused network and storage issues. As a result, tens of thousands of servers were affected, disrupting key parts of the app.

TikTok says the outage interfered with several of the app’s core features, including the ability to publish new posts, discover content, and see accurate real-time view and like counts on videos. Users also reported slow loading times, search problems, and time-outs while using the app.

“We have successfully restored TikTok back to normal after a significant outage caused by winter weather took down a primary U.S. data center site operated by Oracle,” the company writes. “The winter storm led to a power outage, which caused network and storage issues at the site and impacted tens of thousands of servers that help keep TikTok running in the U.S. This affected many of TikTok’s core features—from content posting and discovery to the real-time display of video likes and view counts.”

TikTok says its engineering teams worked “around the clock” alongside Oracle to restore the service safely. The company also apologized to users for the disruption.

The technical problems come just weeks after the U.S. finalized a deal that created a separate entity for TikTok’s American business. Under the agreement, control of TikTok’s U.S. operations was transferred to a group of investors that includes Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX. Each of the three managing investors holds a 15% stake in the business.

Following the deal, many users raised concerns about the numerous bugs in the app and TikTok’s updated privacy policy. The revised policy states: “TikTok collects everything you upload, including drafts you never post,” which prompted scepticism from some users. The disruption also appears to have affected user behavior. Market intelligence firm Sensor Tower reported that U.S. users deleted TikTok 150% more last week compared with the average over the previous three months.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.