TikTok has resolved a weeklong data center outage that disrupted core features and sparked censorship allegations. The platform’s new ownership group, TikTok USDS, stated that a severe winter storm caused network failures at an Oracle-operated U.S. site, impacting tens of thousands of servers. This affected posting, content discovery, and real-time view counts.
During the outage, users and lawmakers, including Sen. Chris Murphy, accused TikTok of suppressing content critical of the Trump administration and immigration policies. Some also reported being unable to send messages containing “Epstein,” though TikTok denied restricting the name.
The allegations arose shortly after TikTok’s U.S. operations transferred to a Trump-aligned investor group, including Oracle, whose founder supports the president. The new owners have pledged to retrain its algorithm using U.S. data. While TikTok attributed all issues to the technical outage, California Governor Gavin Newsom has announced a review into the censorship claims.
