A Catastrophic Debut
Less than 24 hours after TikTok celebrated its transformation into a distinctly American company, the video-sharing platform suffered a meltdown that would test the patience of its 200 million US users and ignite a firestorm of political controversy. What was meant to be a triumphant new chapter for the popular app, finally freed from the specter of a federal ban, instead devolved into a multi-day technical crisis that left creators unable to post content, viewers staring at frozen view counts, and politicians accusing the platform of deliberate censorship.
The chaos began on January 22, when ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, finalized a deal to transfer control of the app’s US operations to a consortium of American investors led by Oracle, the cloud computing giant chaired by billionaire Larry Ellison. The transaction created TikTok USDS Joint Venture, a corporate entity designed to satisfy a federal law requiring the platform to sever ties with foreign adversary control or face removal from American app stores.
But any celebration proved short-lived. By the early hours of Sunday, January 25, users across the United States began reporting widespread failures. Videos would not upload. The For You Page, TikTok’s algorithmically curated feed that serves as the heart of the user experience, suddenly felt generic and unpersonalized. Comments failed to load. Most alarming to content creators, view counts stuck at zero even as engagement metrics suggested people were watching.
The Perfect Storm
The timing could not have been worse. While TikTok’s new owners scrambled to identify the source of the disruptions, two major events dominated the American news cycle. Winter Storm Fern, a powerful weather system sweeping across the continental United States, had placed approximately 230 million people under alerts for power outages and burst pipes. Simultaneously, federal immigration agents in Minneapolis had shot and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a US citizen, during a protest, sparking outrage that was amplified by what the White House later described as false statements regarding the circumstances of the death.
Oracle eventually identified the culprit behind TikTok’s technical failures. “Over the weekend, an Oracle data center experienced a temporary weather-related power outage which impacted TikTok,” said company spokesperson Michael Egbert in a statement. “The challenges US TikTok users may be experiencing are the result of technical issues that followed the power outage.”
The Austin-based technology company, which owns 15 percent of the new TikTok joint venture and serves as the platform’s sole US data center partner, acknowledged that the storm had caused a cascading systems failure affecting tens of thousands of servers. The outage triggered what TikTok described as “multiple bugs, slower load times or timed-out requests” that persisted for days.
For a platform that had built its reputation on seamless, addictive content delivery, the technical explanation seemed plausible to industry analysts. Major cloud infrastructure failures, while rare for platforms of TikTok’s scale, do occur. Yet the confluence of the outage with politically charged events created a credibility crisis that technical statements could not easily resolve.
Silenced Voices or System Glitches
As news of Pretti’s death spread, TikTok users attempting to post content critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and federal enforcement tactics found themselves unable to upload videos. Others reported that posts about the Minneapolis incident received zero views despite their significant follower counts. Comedian and actress Meg Stalter, known for her role in the series Hacks, announced on Instagram that she would delete her TikTok account, which boasted nearly 280,000 followers, claiming the app was “under new ownership and we are being completely censored and monitored.”
Musicians Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas also reported difficulties posting videos about the ICE killing, with Eilish stating on Instagram that “TikTok is silencing people.” California State Senator Scott Weiner joined the chorus of voices claiming suppression. The allegations quickly migrated from social media posts to mainstream news coverage, with outlets including the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post documenting users’ claims.
Then came the “Epstein” issue. Users reported that direct messages containing the surname of Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased convicted sex offender and financier whose case has become a flashpoint for conspiracy theories and political criticism of the Trump administration, were being blocked. Screenshots shared across social media platforms showed error messages stating: “This message may be in violation of our Community Guidelines, and has not been sent to protect our community.”
TikTok USDS Joint Venture denied that it had implemented rules against sharing the name “Epstein” in messages, stating that the blocking appeared to be an automated moderation error affecting certain single-word messages, including innocuous terms like “test.” The company insisted that using the name within sentences went through without restriction. Nevertheless, the optics proved damaging.
Officials Demand Answers
The censorship allegations reached the highest levels of state government. California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose office had independently confirmed instances of suppressed content critical of President Donald Trump, announced on January 27 that he was launching a formal review into whether TikTok was violating California law.
Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports and independently confirmed instances of suppressed content critical of President Trump. I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut elevated the stakes further, describing the alleged censorship as a paramount threat to democratic discourse. “I know it’s hard to track all the threats to democracy out there right now, but this is at the top of the list,” Murphy wrote in a social media post. The Democratic lawmaker suggested that the widespread suppression of content might not be coincidental given that pro-Trump entities had taken control of TikTok’s US operations.
The political dimensions of the crisis were impossible to ignore. Larry Ellison, Oracle’s founder and chief technology officer, is a prominent Republican mega-donor and longtime ally of President Trump. Other investors in the joint venture include Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computer Corp and another Trump donor, as well as Silver Lake and MGX, an Emirati state-owned investment firm with previous business dealings involving Trump-backed cryptocurrency ventures.
Under the terms of the joint venture, ByteDance retains approximately a 20 percent stake in the US business, while American investors hold 80.1 percent. The new entity has committed to retraining and updating the content recommendation algorithm using US user data, a process that raises ongoing questions about who ultimately controls what Americans see in their feeds.
The Mass Departure
Whether driven by genuine censorship fears, privacy concerns, or frustration with the technical glitches, American users responded to the crisis by abandoning the platform in significant numbers. According to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, daily average app uninstalls grew 130 percent from January 22 to January 26 compared with the previous 30 days. Other data suggested an even steeper decline, with some analysts reporting a 195 percent increase in deletions during the week following the ownership transfer.
The exodus created an opening for competitors. Upscrolled, a rival platform promising less censorship than TikTok, surged to the top spot in the US Apple App Store and third place in the Google Play Store. The app now claims more than one million users. Skylight, another competitor, also saw download numbers spike as users sought alternatives. Meanwhile, three separate virtual private network (VPN) applications appeared in the top 10 most downloaded apps, suggesting users were seeking tools to cloak their online activity from perceived government surveillance.
Despite the surge in uninstalls, TikTok’s daily active users actually increased by 2 percent during the same period, according to Sensor Tower. The data suggests that while some vocal users deleted the app in protest, many more remained or joined the platform, though they spent their time viewing content rather than creating it during the outage.
Minda Smiley, a social media analyst at research firm Emarketer, noted that optics matter more than technical explanations in situations involving platform trust. “Regardless of what’s actually happening, if people do feel as if content is being suppressed or content is difficult to upload or is being moderated or whatever it might be, that’s enough reason for a lot of users to flee or to stop using TikTok,” she explained. Still, she cautioned that user threats to quit platforms often exceed actual behavior, citing the previous year’s brief migration to Chinese app RedNote during an earlier TikTok ban scare that quickly fizzled.
New Terms, New Fears
Compounding the technical and political turmoil, TikTok’s new US entity updated its privacy policy immediately following the ownership transfer. The revised terms explicitly allow the company to collect precise GPS location data from American users, depending on device settings, expanding beyond the approximate location data previously collected. The policy also broadened data collection related to user interactions with TikTok’s artificial intelligence tools, including prompts and usage patterns.
While users can opt out by disabling location services, the timing of the change amplified existing paranoia. Critics noted that the updated policy also lists the collection of sensitive information including “racial and ethnic origin,” “sexual life or sexual orientation,” “status as transgender or nonbinary,” and “citizenship or immigration status.” However, analysts pointed out that this language appeared in previous versions of the terms, which were last updated in 2024 to comply with state consumer privacy laws.
Nevertheless, in a political climate where immigration enforcement has become increasingly aggressive, the explicit mention of collecting citizenship and immigration status data rattled many users. Activists warned that the app could theoretically be used to track the movements of protesters, though TikTok has not enabled the GPS feature for broad surveillance and it remains opt-in only.
Service Restored, Trust Broken
By January 27, TikTok announced that it had made significant progress in recovering its US infrastructure, though it warned that users might continue experiencing technical issues. Oracle confirmed that the cascading failure had been resolved, restoring the ability to upload videos and view accurate engagement metrics. The platform emphasized that user data and content engagement remained safe throughout the outage.
Yet the damage to TikTok’s reputation under its new American ownership may prove longer-lasting than the technical disruptions. The platform that once seemed impervious to scandal, having survived previous ban threats and regulatory scrutiny, now faces a crisis of credibility. Users who accepted Chinese ownership with resigned skepticism now confront a more complex scenario: an app controlled by American billionaires with direct access to the White House, collecting more detailed personal data than before, and suffering catastrophic failures at the precise moment when users needed the platform most to document government actions.
For creators like Keara Sullivan, a 26-year-old comedian with more than half a million followers, the situation represents a painful professional crossroads. “I’m not one of those creators who’s a TikTok hater. I’m very transparent about the fact that where I am in my career is largely because of TikTok,” Sullivan told The Guardian. “That’s why it’s really sad for me to step away from the platform, at least for now.”
As TikTok attempts to stabilize its operations and rebuild user confidence, it faces an environment where every future glitch will be scrutinized for political motive. The divest-or-ban law that forced the sale remains in effect, giving regulators authority to demand further changes or impose actual deplatforming if the current structure fails to satisfy national security requirements. For the moment, TikTok remains online but sits in political limbo, its algorithm now a subject of partisan suspicion and its infrastructure vulnerable to both winter storms and summer heat.
Key Points
- TikTok’s US operations transferred to a joint venture led by Oracle on January 22, with ByteDance retaining a 19.9% stake
- Winter Storm Fern caused a power outage at Oracle data centers on January 25, triggering a cascading systems failure that lasted several days
- Users reported inability to upload videos, zero view counts, and blocked direct messages containing the word “Epstein”
- California Governor Gavin Newsom launched a state investigation into allegations that TikTok censored anti-Trump and anti-ICE content
- Senator Chris Murphy described the alleged censorship as a primary threat to democracy
- App deletions surged 130-195% in the week following the ownership change, according to Sensor Tower data
- Competitor Upscrolled reached #1 on the US App Store as users sought alternatives
- TikTok updated its privacy policy to allow collection of precise GPS location and sensitive personal data including immigration status
- New owners include Trump allies Larry Ellison and Michael Dell, raising concerns about political influence over content moderation
- TikTok attributed all issues to technical failures, denying deliberate censorship of political content
