TikTok crashes on its first weekend under US ownership

TikTok suffered widespread problems in the first weekend after finalizing the sale of its US arm, though some of the issues appear to have spread globally. TikTok has yet to confirm any issues a day after the problems began, making it difficult to guess the extent of the problem.

However, Tiktokkers – including some edge Writers – Confirmed issues including difficulty logging in, inability to load videos, For You page algorithm that appears to have reset itself, problems loading comments, and other site features.

According to the DownDetector websiteThe problems escalated in the early hours of Sunday morning, however Some users are still reporting errors. Many have found it impossible to upload videos, which have been kept “under review” indefinitely, and for just one edge The writer is still the case – the video uploaded last night has not been posted to his page after about six hours.

As of last week, TikTok’s operation is in the US Under ownership From an investment consortium that includes Larry Ellison’s cloud giant Oracle, the solution to the long-threatened US embargo. This has already resulted in new terms of service being imposed on users in the US, which include collecting more precise location data and details of users’ AI interactions. The new owners also control content moderation in the US, which has some raising fears of censorship even before this weekend’s releases, and they must retrain the app’s algorithm based on US data.

Given the timing, many have linked the TikTok issues, Trump’s new owners of his US operations, and this weekend’s anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis, which were exacerbated by the killing of a second local resident. Alex Prettyby federal agents. The wording of the error message led many politically active accounts to do so Presumably the worst When their videos went unpublished, as did the fact that previous Political For You pages were suddenly filled with public content.

However, so far there is no reason to believe that the power outage was directly related to ICE activity this weekend, especially since some Editors Those outside the US reported issues with the app as well — though it worked fine for a couple of them EdgeBritish writers. This does not guarantee that new ownership has nothing to do with the matter, as technical issues caused by backend changes during the migration could easily have ripple effects across TikTok’s global user base.

We reached out to TikTok for comment on the outage, but did not receive a response as of press time.