TikTok Restores U.S. Service After Data Center Outage

TikTok confirmed that service across the United States has returned to normal following outages that disrupted core app functions during the past week. The disruption occurred shortly after the platform completed a major ownership restructuring in the U.S.

Good to Know

• TikTok reports more than 220 million users in the United States
• A winter storm triggered power and infrastructure failures at a key data center
• Rival social platforms recorded short-term growth during the disruption

TikTok said on Sunday that it has restored full service in the United States after outages last week affected posting, discovery, and performance across the app. The company attributed the disruption to severe winter weather that caused a failure at a key data center.

TikTok said the outage originated at a primary U.S. facility operated by Oracle. A snowstorm led to a power outage at the site, triggering network and storage failures that impacted tens of thousands of servers supporting TikTok operations nationwide.

“We have successfully restored TikTok back to normal after a significant outage caused by winter weather took down a primary U.S. data center site operated by Oracle. The winter storm led to a power outage which caused network and storage issues at the site and impacted tens of thousands of servers that help keep TikTok running in the U.S. This affected many of TikTok’s core features—from content posting and discovery to the real-time display of video likes and view counts,” the company said in a post on X.

The outage followed the January completion of a U.S. ownership restructuring. Under the finalized agreement, a U.S.-based investor group known as TikTok USDS took an 80 percent controlling stake in the platform, while ByteDance retained the remaining 20 percent.

As the transition coincided with the winter storm, users across the United States reported widespread issues. Posting delays, failed searches, time-outs, and slower load times persisted for several days. TikTok warned creators that posts might temporarily show zero views while systems remained unstable.

TikTok later said teams were working to resolve the issue, although intermittent disruptions continued before service stabilized. The company did not indicate that the outage was linked to the ownership change beyond timing overlap.

Short-term instability created openings for competing platforms like UpScrolled. The platform climbed to second place in the U.S. App Store social media rankings and recorded 41,000 downloads within days of the TikTok deal finalization, according to data from Appfigures. UpScrolled also just announced to have surpassed 2.5 million users.

TikTok said no further disruptions are expected following the restoration of full service.