TikTok’s US Handover Spirals Into Chaos

The deal that saw TikTok’s Chinese overlords handing over operations to a (mostly) American-owned group was finalized last week. However, things haven’t exactly been running smoothly for the newly-minted American version of the popular social network since then.

Over the weekend, some TikTok-ers reported having issues uploading videos. It was later announced that the issue was related to a power outage at a US data center, which is fair, since, as pointed out by Mactrast, severe winter weather did cause power outages across much of the United States this weekend.

During the same time period, TikTok users also claimed they were unable to upload videos connected to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Saturday ICE shooting in Minneapolis. This led to claims about censorship. Users reported having their videos placed into review, or they said they received fewer than expected views for their videos.

Some users also reported receiving messages informing them that their shooting-related posts had been flagged as “Ineligible for Recommendation,” while others say their posts were “temporarily suspended.”

Jamie Favazza, head of communications for TikTok US, told NBC News that censorship claims were unfounded and blamed the problems on the US data center outage. New posts may still have lingering issues, she said, while the company works with the data center to fully restore service.

As of Monday evening, TikTok reported it was still working on resolving a long list of bugs related to infrastructure, which the company says caused a “cascading systems failure.” While the issues are being resolved, TikTok-ers could see time-outs for requests, and slower load times when content does load. They may also see zero views or likes for their video masterpieces.

Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Monday that he was launching a censorship review of TikTok following the weekend complaints of content criticizing President Trump and ICE’s actions in Minneapolis over the weekend.

“It’s time to investigate,” Newsom wrote on Threads. “I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content.”

The outrage over possible censorship had led some TikTok users to abandon the newly US-owned platform and make the move to alternative video sharing platform UpScrolled. At the time of this writing, UpScrolled is the top social networking app on the App Store and is the number two free app overall in Apple’s app marketplace. That ranking only reflects the number of downloads for the app in recent days, and does not reflect the actual numbers of those using the app.

Many users are also taking to social media to express their concerns about the TikTok’s privacy policy language, which includes mention that among the sensitive information TikTok could collect includes their “sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status.”

However, as noted by TechCrunch, the service’s prior privacy policy also included that wording. The publication notes that TikTok’s privacy policy wording is primarily there to allow the company to comply with state privacy laws like California’s strict Consumer Privacy Act. The act requires companies to disclose to consumers what “sensitive information” is collected. Other social media apps’ privacy policies contain similar wording.

As of last week, TikTok in the US is now owned by TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, a conglomerate that leaves only 19.9% of the social video sharing service in the hands of ByteDance — the maximum it’s allowed to own under the a 2024 law that required TikTok to be divested of “adversarial” foreign ownership or risk a shutdown in the United States.