TikTok's First Week Under US Ownership Brings Outages, Censorship Claims and Rising Deletions

A new American company faces an immediate crisis

TikTok's move into American ownership on January 22 was supposed to secure its future in the United States. Instead, its opening days brought widespread technical failures, allegations of political censorship and a sharp increase in app deletions. By February 3, 2026, the platform had made progress restoring service, but its new owners were also facing a California review and questions about how they would handle content and personal data.

The disruption affected a platform with 200 million US users. Creators struggled to upload videos, comments failed to load and view counters stayed at zero even when other engagement measures suggested people were watching. The For You Page, the personalised stream of videos at the centre of TikTok, appeared generic to some users.

ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese parent company, completed the ownership transaction on January 22. The deal transferred control of US operations to a consortium of American investors led by Oracle, the cloud computing company chaired by billionaire Larry Ellison. It created TikTok USDS Joint Venture, an entity intended to satisfy the federal law requiring TikTok to separate from foreign adversary control or face removal from American app stores.

The new arrangement left ByteDance with 19.9 percent, approximately one fifth, of the US business, while American investors held 80.1 percent. Oracle owns 15 percent and serves as TikTok's sole US data centre partner. The joint venture also committed to retraining and updating the recommendation algorithm using US user data. That algorithm is the system that chooses which videos appear in a person's feed.

The ownership announcement was quickly followed by a crisis. Widespread failures were being reported by the early hours of Sunday, January 25, placing the new company's first major operational test just days after the deal closed.

How a winter storm disrupted TikTok

Winter Storm Fern was sweeping across the continental United States as TikTok's problems developed. Approximately 230 million people were under alerts concerning power outages and burst pipes. Oracle attributed TikTok's disruption to a temporary power failure at one of its data centres, followed by technical problems during recovery.

Michael Egbert, an Oracle spokesperson, described the cause in a company statement:

Over the weekend, an Oracle data center experienced a temporary weather-related power outage which impacted TikTok. The challenges US TikTok users may be experiencing are the result of technical issues that followed the power outage.

Oracle, based in Austin, acknowledged a cascading systems failure affecting tens of thousands of servers. A cascading failure happens when a problem in one part of a connected system causes problems elsewhere. Restoring electricity can therefore leave a second task: getting the affected systems to work properly together again.

TikTok described the resulting problems as "multiple bugs, slower load times or timed-out requests". A request times out when a system takes too long to respond, leaving an upload, comment or other action unfinished. Those difficulties persisted for days.

Major cloud infrastructure failures are rare for platforms of TikTok's size, but they do occur. Industry analysts regarded the technical explanation as plausible. TikTok's reputation, however, rested on smooth delivery of an endless stream of videos, making even routine actions failing at once a major disruption for viewers and creators.

The storm also coincided with a politically charged event in Minneapolis. Federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old US citizen, during a protest. His death prompted outrage, intensified by statements about the circumstances that the White House later described as false. Users trying to discuss the killing encountered TikTok's upload failures at the same time.

Why failed uploads became censorship allegations

TikTok users attempting to post criticism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and federal enforcement tactics said their videos would not upload. Others said posts about the Minneapolis incident received zero views despite substantial follower counts. The combination of political content and visible technical failures made the outage a dispute about whose voices could be heard.

Meg Stalter, the comedian and actress known for the series Hacks, announced on Instagram that she would delete her TikTok account, which had nearly 280,000 followers. She described the platform as "under new ownership and we are being completely censored and monitored."

Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas also reported difficulty posting videos about the ICE killing. Eilish said on Instagram that "TikTok is silencing people." California State Senator Scott Weiner joined those alleging suppression. The complaints moved beyond social media into coverage that included the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post.

TikTok attributed the problems to technical failures and denied deliberate censorship of political content. Users, meanwhile, were judging the platform through what happened when they tried to publish. A failed upload prevented a video from reaching an audience; a counter stuck at zero made it difficult for a creator to understand whether an uploaded video was reaching anyone.

The political timing made those problems especially damaging. For users trying to document government actions or respond to Pretti's death, a platform failure interrupted a conversation they considered urgent. Statements about servers and electricity addressed the technical cause, while their complaints centred on the practical effect of being unable to speak to their followers.

The dispute over messages containing Epstein

Direct messages produced another controversy. Users said messages containing the surname of Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased convicted sex offender and financier, were blocked. His case had become a focus of conspiracy theories and political criticism of the Trump administration.

Screenshots circulated on social media showing the warning displayed when messages failed to send:

This message may be in violation of our Community Guidelines, and has not been sent to protect our community.

TikTok USDS Joint Venture said it had introduced no rule against sharing the name "Epstein". The company said the blocking appeared to be an automated moderation error affecting certain messages consisting of a single word, including the ordinary word "test". It said messages using Epstein's name within sentences went through without restriction.

Automated moderation uses software to identify material that might breach a platform's rules. In this instance, TikTok described a software error, while users were seeing a warning that presented their message as a possible rules violation. That wording added another source of suspicion during the wider outage.

California opens a review as politicians demand answers

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on January 27 that he was launching a formal review into whether TikTok was violating state law. His office said it had received reports and independently confirmed instances of suppressed content critical of President Donald Trump.

Newsom set out the allegation and the purpose of the review in his announcement:

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.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy also criticised the alleged suppression, presenting it as a threat to democratic discussion. In a social media post, the Democratic senator wrote:

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 suggested the complaints might be connected to entities supportive of Trump taking control of TikTok's US operations. The review's outcome was not given, and no next hearing date or deadline was announced.

Several investors had political connections that added to scrutiny of the deal. Ellison, Oracle's founder and chief technology officer, is a major Republican donor and a longtime Trump ally. Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computer Corp and another Trump donor, is also among the investors.

Other participants include Silver Lake and MGX, an Emirati investment firm owned by the state. MGX had previous business dealings involving cryptocurrency ventures backed by Trump. Alongside the ownership change, the promise to retrain TikTok's recommendation algorithm using American user data brought attention to who would make decisions about the videos Americans see.

The first week's key dates

The ownership transfer, service disruption and government response unfolded within less than a week. The dates show how quickly an operational problem became a dispute about content moderation and political influence.

• January 22: ByteDance completed the transfer of control over TikTok's US operations to TikTok USDS Joint Venture. The new US entity also updated its privacy policy following the transfer.
• January 25: By the early hours of Sunday, users across the United States were reporting widespread problems with uploads, feeds, comments and view counts.
• January 27: Newsom announced California's review. TikTok said it had made significant progress restoring its US infrastructure, while warning that technical problems could continue.
• February 3, 2026: TikTok remained online as the dispute over service reliability, content moderation and privacy continued.

Oracle said the cascading failure had been resolved, restoring uploads and accurate engagement measures. TikTok's January 27 warning nevertheless acknowledged that users might still encounter problems during recovery.

More deletions, but more daily users too

Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm, recorded a 130 percent rise in average daily TikTok uninstalls from January 22 to January 26 compared with the previous 30 days. Some analysts reported a 195 percent increase in deletions during the week after the ownership transfer. The figures describe different measurement periods, with both indicating a substantial increase in removals.

A 130 percent rise means the average number of daily uninstalls was 2.3 times the earlier average. A 195 percent increase means nearly three times the comparison level. Neither figure supplies the actual number of people deleting the app, so the size of the departure in people cannot be calculated from those percentages.

Sensor Tower also found that TikTok's daily active users increased by 2 percent during the same period. Deletions and daily activity measure different things: one counts removals of the app, while the other counts people using it on a given day. TikTok could therefore experience a surge in deletions while more people continued to visit.

The figures suggested that some vocal users left in protest while many remained or joined. During the outage, users could spend time watching content even when creating and uploading videos was difficult. Censorship fears, privacy concerns and frustration with technical failures all formed part of the reaction.

Upscrolled, a competing platform promising less censorship than TikTok, reached first place in the US Apple App Store and third place in the Google Play Store. It claimed more than one million users. Skylight, another competitor, also experienced a spike in downloads.

Three virtual private network (VPN) apps appeared among the 10 most downloaded apps. VPN tools help conceal aspects of a person's online activity, and their popularity suggested that some users were seeking protection from perceived government surveillance.

Minda Smiley, a social media analyst at Emarketer, explained why the experience of using a platform can matter more to users than a technical account of the problem:

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.

Smiley also cautioned that stated intentions to leave social platforms often exceed actual departures. She cited the brief migration to the Chinese app RedNote during the previous year's TikTok ban scare, which quickly faded.

What changed in the privacy policy

TikTok's new US entity updated its privacy policy immediately after the ownership transfer. The revised policy explicitly allowed collection of precise GPS location from American users, depending on device settings, expanding beyond the approximate location information previously collected.

Precise GPS data can locate a device more closely than an approximate location. TikTok's GPS feature remained dependent on users choosing to allow it, and users could prevent collection by disabling location services. The company had not enabled the feature for broad surveillance.

The policy also expanded collection relating to interactions with TikTok's artificial intelligence tools, including the prompts people entered and their usage patterns. A prompt is the instruction or question a user gives an AI tool.

Sensitive information listed in the policy included "racial and ethnic origin", "sexual life or sexual orientation", "status as transgender or nonbinary", and "citizenship or immigration status". Those categories drew attention amid increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement.

Analysts pointed out that the sensitive information language already appeared in earlier versions of the terms, last updated in 2024 to comply with state consumer privacy laws. The precise location provision and expanded collection concerning AI interactions were changes described after the ownership transfer; the listed sensitive categories were already present.

Activists warned that location information could theoretically be used to track protesters. The timing of the policy update, coming alongside upload failures and allegations about suppressed immigration content, increased users' concerns about who could obtain their information and how it might be used.

Restoring service leaves a wider trust problem

TikTok said on January 27 that it had made significant progress recovering its US infrastructure. Oracle confirmed that the cascading failure had been resolved. TikTok also said user data and content engagement remained safe throughout the outage.

The technical recovery addressed the immediate obstacles to uploading and measuring audience response. The new company still faced users who questioned its moderation decisions, its political connections and its collection of personal information.

TikTok had already survived threats of a ban and repeated regulatory scrutiny. Users accustomed to Chinese ownership now faced a company controlled by American investors, including billionaires with connections to the White House. Its commitments on the recommendation algorithm made decisions about what appears in feeds a continuing point of political scrutiny.

Keara Sullivan, a 26-year-old comedian with more than half a million followers, described the professional cost of stepping away from a platform that had helped build her career:

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. That's why it's really sad for me to step away from the platform, at least for now.

The federal law requiring divestment or a ban remained in effect. Regulators retained authority to demand further changes or require removal of the platform if the structure failed to meet national security requirements. TikTok remained available, but its new ownership had not ended the political uncertainty surrounding it.

Future glitches would face scrutiny for possible political motives. The opening week's storm also exposed the importance of reliable infrastructure for a platform used to publish urgent events, leaving its operations vulnerable to severe weather, including winter storms and summer heat.

Key Points

• TikTok's US ownership deal closed on January 22. ByteDance retained 19.9 percent, American investors held 80.1 percent and Oracle owned 15 percent.
• Oracle attributed the disruption beginning January 25 to a weather related power outage followed by technical failures affecting tens of thousands of servers.
• Users reported failed uploads, frozen view counts and blocked messages containing Epstein's name. TikTok denied deliberate political censorship and described the message blocking as an automated error.
• Governor Gavin Newsom launched a California review on January 27. Senator Chris Murphy also criticised the alleged suppression.
• Sensor Tower recorded a 130 percent increase in average daily uninstalls and a 2 percent increase in daily active users. Some analysts measured a 195 percent rise in deletions over the week after the transfer.
• Upscrolled reached first place in the US Apple App Store and claimed more than one million users. Skylight downloads also rose.
• TikTok's revised privacy policy allowed precise GPS collection with permission and expanded collection involving AI tools. Sensitive information categories had appeared in previous terms.
• TikTok and Oracle reported progress restoring service, while the federal divestment or ban law remained in effect.