A little over a week ago, TikTok US experienced an outage which resulted in feeds being reset, and videos unable to upload and stuck in the “pending” stage. The good news for TikTok users in the US is that it looks like the outage is fixed and service has been fully restored .
TikTok US services restored following outage
This is according to a post on X by the official TikTok US account , where it says that the company has successfully restored services after the outage. The official explanation attributes the outage to a winter storm. This led to a power outage, which then caused network and storage issues.
The company says that the issues users experienced, such as content posting, were a result of this outage. But like we said, the good news is that things should be back to normal. The service wasn’t completely dead; that would have been disastrous. Instead, it affected just a few core functions of the app , so it was still largely usable.
Censorship conspiracies arise
That being said, the outage has led some to speculate it was more than just technical issues. According to some, they believed that some degree of censorship could have been at play here . The company has denied those claims, but the timing is interesting. The outage coincided with the protests taking place in Minneapolis. Since social media is one place people turn to for the latest news and updates, censoring it makes sense. Especially if you’re trying to downplay the situation.
We’ve seen that play used before in other countries on other platforms, so it’s not entirely out of the question. Also, a post on X by California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office claimed to have “independently confirmed instances” of content being suppressed. Once again, we haven’t seen any actual evidence, so take it with a grain of salt.
In the meantime, the TikTok US deal has resulted in some users seeking alternative platforms. This led to Skylight seeing a 150% surge in sign-ups . Whether or not users will keep using Skylight or will eventually return to TikTok remains to be seen. This will also depend on whether TikTok US’ new owners can manage the algorithm properly.
Part of the deal is that the US entity gets to license TikTok’s algorithm and retrain it using US user data. We have questioned whether or not it will have a negative impact on the user experience, but only time will tell.
