TikTok Faces Outage and Censorship Concerns Days After U.S. Ownership Deal Closes

Monday January 26, 2026 4:59 pm PST by Juli Clover

TikTok last week finalized a deal to hand over its U.S. operations to a majority American-owned venture, and things aren't exactly running smoothly for the new U.S. company so far.

Over the weekend, some U.S. TikTok users were unable to upload videos, which TikTok attributed to a power outage at a U.S. data center. TikTok users found they were unable to upload videos related to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Saturday shooting in Minneapolis, leading to concerns over censorship. Users saw their videos put into a review process, or experienced fewer than expected video views. Some users received messages that their posts related to the shooting had been flagged as "Ineligible for Recommendation," while others were temporarily suspended.

This evening, TikTok said that it is still working to resolve the infrastructure issue, which apparently caused a "cascading systems failure" leading to a long list of bugs. TikTok users may see slower load times, timed-out requests, and 0 views or likes on videos.

The ongoing outage and the accompanying censorship fears have caused some TikTok users to abandon the platform for UpScrolled, an alternative video sharing social platform. UpScrolled is currently the number eight free app in the U.S. App Store, but it was as high as number two earlier today.

Users have also expressed concerns about an updated TikTok privacy policy that suggests it collects "citizenship or immigration status" along with precise user location information, but the prior TikTok privacy policy also included that wording.

The new TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is 80.1 percent owned by U.S. and global investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. The three companies each own 15 percent as managing investors, and other U.S. stakeholders include the Dell Family Office and affiliates of Susquehanna International Group. TikTok parent company ByteDance continues to hold a 19.9 percent stake.

A seven-member majority-American board of directors is operating the U.S. version of TikTok, with Adam Presser, TikTok's former global head of operations serving as CEO.

Under the agreement, the venture handles U.S. data protection, content moderation, and algorithm security. TikTok's recommendation algorithm is being retrained and updated on U.S. user data, and it has been secured in Oracle's cloud environment.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Tag: TikTok

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Top Rated Comments

Sowelu

10 months ago

'Censorship concerns'

Ya think?

Nice soft landing there, MacRumors. If you decide to crawl up Trump's descending colon as well, give Tim Cook our regards.

Even if this is a glitch, gee, what a coincidence. Looks like the new owners of TikTok got their marching orders from the Pedo-In-Chief, or, at best, the Pedo-Protector-In-Chief.

I am sure that this 'outage' was giving them time to MAGAify the algorithm where up is down, wrong is right, legit and proven traitors are somehow patriots, and the worst humans are 'religious' as they worship evil alt-Jesus since the one that the rest of the world knows, whether you're religious or not, was a woke, liberal, hippie, Jew. So yeah, they must've had those servers working overtime converting the algorithms for those living on Earth 2.

The bottom line is, TikTok is now state-run, like, really state-run. These are not false accusations like the ones from the painfully gullible and ignorant MAGA mouth-breathers before Twitter was destroyed by the country's biggest Welfare Queen and actual speech suppressor.

PSA: I don't interact or argue with MAGA cultists. It's like trying to reason with poorly programmed robots that just know how to repeat debunked talking points from actual fake news outlets.

Thread happily ignored.

Score: 28 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Makosuke

10 months ago

So, basically:

Old TikTok: Try to post about the Chinese government killing protesters in the Tiananmen Square Massacre or other Chinese government human rights abuses, and your content will be downgraded or back-door censored.

New TikTok: Try to post about the US government killing protesters or other US government human rights abuses, and your content will be downgraded or back-door censored.

Such an improvement! No word yet on whether you're also still getting back-door censored if you try to badmouth the Chinese government.

Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)

hieranonymous

10 months ago

The Ellisons et al acquired the American operations of TikTok at gunpoint with the express purpose of turning it into a right-wing wasteland. They’ve now accomplished that aim. The intention was always to break it.

That’s also why the TOS have been updated with weird language about reproductive data, sexual orientation and immigration status, in addition to even more invasive location tracking. It’s just a funnel for Palantir now. The only thing to do is steer clear of it.

Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)

CapitalIdea

10 months ago

Is anyone really surprised? The same situation as oil execs and CBS knowing about the Venezuela operation before members of Congress did. TikTok will basically become state media if that turd has anything to do with it.

Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Delivered

10 months ago

Ehh probably scrubbing video of uh certain conflicts and news items to make sure only videos that support an official narrative remain. What a time to be alive. Capitalism may have beaten Communism but Soviet style censorship is quickly becoming the new norm.