TikTok says it is ‘back to normal’ after week-long outage

TikTok says it is “back to normal” after an outage that left it not working properly for a week.

Late last month, TikTok’s US operations were transferred to American ownership, bringing to an end years of threats of a ban because of alleged Chinese control of the app. That controversy has led to a movement to delete the app, and a surge in popularity for competitors.

But that transfer has proven controversial in a number of ways, with criticism of the links its new owners have to Donald Trump, as well as suggestions that it is suppressing political content.

But, at the same time, the app stopped working in more basic and clear ways. Around a week ago, soon after the transfer, TikTok stopped working properly in the US.

Users said that they were seeing old posts resurface in their feeds, and the app appeared to show that new posts were not being seen by anyone at all.

Now, it says that problem has been fixed. And it has confirmed that the “significant outage” was caused by a snow storm that took down a “primary US data centre operated by Oracle”, one of the companies involved in the takeover.

“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 US,” it said in a statement. “This affected many of TikTok's core features-from content posting and discovery to the real-time display of video likes and view counts.

“Our teams worked around the clock with Oracle to ensure a safe and full restoration of systems. We're sorry about the issues experienced by our US community.

“We appreciate how much you count on TikTok to create, discover, and connect with what matters to you. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”