TikTok blames its US problems on a power outage

TikTok says a power outage is causing ongoing issues and outages that started in the US early Sunday morning. In an email to The Verge, TikTok USDS spokesperson Jamie Favazza pointed to a statement posted to the joint venture’s newly-created X account, which says the company has been “working to restore our services following a power outage at a U.S. data center impacting TikTok and other apps we operate.”

On Sunday, many US users, including some of us here at The Verge, reported not being able to upload videos to TikTok or see most new videos, including new videos uploaded successfully by users from outside the US. Others said that their algorithm appeared to “reset,” though it’s unclear if that’s linked to the power outage, too.

A new joint venture helmed by Oracle and a group of investors friendly to the Trump administration took over TikTok in the US last week, raising concerns about censorship and privacy. TikTok USDS promises to route user data through Oracle-owned data centers, which are also supposed to house a new version of TikTok’s algorithm trained on US user activity.

“We’re working with our data center partner to stabilize our service,” TikTok USDS’s statement reads. “We’re sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon.” The company doesn’t specify whether the outage occurred at one of Oracle’s data centers or if the problem is related to the massive snowstorm that covered a large portion of the US over the weekend.