What happened
TikTok glitched for US users starting Sunday, 2026-01-25, and the TikTok USDS Joint Venture — the app's new US operator — confirmed the cause only on Monday morning: a power outage at a US data center. 'Since yesterday we've been working to restore our services following a power outage at a US data center impacting TikTok and other apps we operate,' the venture posted on X, saying it was working with its data center partner to stabilize service.
By Monday evening the problems persisted, with TikTok USDS warning users to expect bugs, slower load times, or timed-out requests including when posting new content, and directly addressing creators' fears about videos showing zero views and missing earnings: the glitch was temporary and actual data and engagement were safe. The venture explained that while the network had recovered, the outage caused a cascading systems failure it was still resolving.
DownDetector showed problems beginning early Sunday and mostly resolved by early Monday, but The Verge reported lingering issues: logins, upload delays, generic content flooding For You pages, and inaccessible comments.
The venture's silence while the app broke — during its first weekend under new US ownership — let conspiracy theories bloom on social media that the app had begun censoring left-leaning users. Ars Technica also noted users were digesting Wired's report that TikTok's new US terms of service would collect precise GPS-derived location data and share AI interactions, deepening distrust, while The Information had reported in July that migrating users to the US-trained app was expected to cause more 'technical issues' as the venture retrained the algorithm.
What it cost
Days of broken uploads, logins and comments for US users, '0 views' creator panics, and censorship conspiracy theories during the app's first weekend under US ownership
Why it happened
A single data center power failure cascaded into platform-wide systems failures
The joint venture went quiet for nearly a day while creators watched their view counts read zero
The outage landed in the most scrutinized week of TikTok's US handover, with ownership-change distrust already high
The lesson
Explaining an outage an hour late is cheap; explaining it during an ownership transition after conspiracy theories have hatched is not
Aftermath
As of 2026-01-26 TikTok USDS said the network had recovered and it was resolving the cascading failure's aftereffects, assuring creators their engagement data was intact, while users kept noting the app seemed more invasive and less reliable under US control.
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