We Now Know What Caused the TikTok Outage.
If you tried to access TikTok on Sunday, you might have noticed something odd: the app wasn’t working. Glitches happen, of course, as any Verizon subscriber will attest . But at the time, all sorts of theories were circulating. TikTok had just officially come under US control, leading some to speculate that the outage had something to do with the change in ownership. As one user put it , “It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that TikTok is down days after the people they were forced to sell to take control of it.”
As it turns out, the outage was caused by a management change—but not in the way some conspiracy theories suggest. On Monday morning, TikTok finally released a statement blaming the outage on issues at its US data center. The statement reads: “Since yesterday, we’ve been working to restore our services following a power outage at our US data center that impacted TikTok and other apps we manage. We are working with our data center partner to stabilize our service. We apologize for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon.”
The outage may not be the only change in TikTok.
As for TikTok, the app is currently functioning properly . If the issue really was just a power outage at that data center, it appears to have been resolved. But that doesn’t mean the company’s reputation has been restored. Users are accusing the app’s new owners of changing the algorithm , complaining about “For You” pages being reset , irrelevant content in the feed , and AI-generated content . I’ve seen users accuse the app of blocking anti-Trump and anti-ICE content, and comedian Gianmarco Soresi says that even some of his non-political TikTok videos have “zero views,” which he attributes to the inefficiencies of the people running the app. (I’ve reached out to TikTok for comment on user reports of algorithm changes and will update if I hear back.)
It will take us longer to understand whether this sale has significantly changed TikTok’s algorithm and user feeds. But the app is working —at least for now.