TikTok’s First US Weekend Hit by Data Center Outage
▼ Summary
– TikTok experienced a widespread glitch for US users starting Sunday, which its new US owners confirmed was caused by a power outage at a US data center.
– The company’s USDS Joint Venture apologized for the disruption and stated it is working with its data center partner to restore and stabilize services.
– While outage tracking indicated most problems were resolved by early Monday, some users continued to face issues like login problems, slow uploads, and generic content feeds.
– The prolonged silence from the company during the initial outage fueled social media conspiracy theories that the new right-wing owners were censoring left-leaning users.
– This incident marks the first major service disruption since the app came under the control of US owners selected by former President Donald Trump.
The popular video-sharing platform TikTok experienced significant service disruptions for its American user base this past weekend, with the newly formed US-based ownership group confirming the cause was a power outage at a critical US data center. This incident marks the first major technical challenge for the app since its operational control shifted to a US-led entity, raising questions about infrastructure stability during the transition.
In a statement released on Monday morning via the social media platform X, the TikTok USDS Joint Venture acknowledged the ongoing problems. The group explained that teams have been actively working to restore services since Sunday after the power failure impacted not only TikTok but also other applications under its operation. They are collaborating with their data center partner to stabilize the platform and apologized for the disruption, expressing hope for a swift resolution.
Reports from outage tracking services indicated that issues began surfacing early on Sunday morning. While the majority of these problems appeared to be resolved by the start of the business week on Monday, some users continued to report persistent glitches. These ongoing issues included difficulties logging into accounts, extended delays when attempting to upload new videos, and a noticeable flood of generic, non-personalized content on individual ‘For You’ feeds. Additional problems involved trouble accessing comment sections and other intermittent app failures.
While it is evident that the technical team is focused on fixing the fallout from the data center failure, the company’s initial silence as the app malfunctioned fueled significant speculation online. The outages occurred during the first weekend the platform was under the stewardship of its new US owners, a consortium selected by former President Donald Trump. This timing led to a surge of conspiracy theories across social media, with some users alleging the glitches were a form of targeted censorship against left-leaning content creators, rather than the result of a straightforward technical failure.
(Source: Ars Technica)
