TikTok says a power outage caused widespread issues for users

WASHINGTON — Experienced issues with TikTok over the weekend? You’re not alone. 

TikTok addressed the widespread issues on Monday, citing that it was working to resolve a major infrastructure issue caused by a power outage at one of its U.S. data center partner sites. On Sunday night, there were nearly 6,000 reports of issues on the site, including problems with users’ timelines and the app. 

“Since yesterday we’ve been working to restore our services following a power outage at a U.S. data center impacting TikTok and other apps we operate. We’re working with our data center partner to stabilize our service,”  TikTok said on Monday morning. “We’re sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon.

Later on Monday, TikTok issued a new update saying it was continuing to resolve the issue, but the network has improved. 

“While the network has been recovered, the outage caused a cascading systems failure that we’ve been working to resolve together with our data center partner,” TikTok said. 

The platform said users may notice “multiple bugs, slower load times, or timed-out requests, including when posting new content.” Additionally, creators on the platform may temporarily see “0” views or likes on new videos. TikTok said that this is a display error, caused by server timeouts and that data and engagement are “safe.” 

“Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to bring TikTok back to full capacity as soon as we can,” TikTok said in a statement. 

The outage comes just days after ByteDance finalized an agreement to sell the platform’s U.S. operations to a group of investors, including Oracle and Silver Lake. TikTok announced https://newsroom.tiktok.com/announcement-from-the-new-tiktok-usds-joint-venture-llc?lang=enthat it would “retain, test and update” its current algorithm and update its Trust & Safety practices, though no timeline was given for these changes.