Many TikTok users recently reported problems uploading videos, sudden drops to zero views, or posts getting stuck “under review.” Almost all of those complaints involved videos criticizing ICE or discussing the murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. These issues appeared shortly after TikTok transitioned to a new U.S.-controlled ownership structure and concerns quickly spread that the platform might be quietly censoring politically sensitive content. This concern was justified.
TikTok has denied those accusations. The company says the disruptions were “caused by a power outage at a U.S. data center, which led to widespread technical failures affecting uploads, recommendations, and video visibility across the platform”. According to TikTok, the problems were not targeted at any specific topic or viewpoint and impacted many types of content.
However data shows users experienced the issues unevenly, with some creators saying non-political videos posted normally while certain political posts did not. The timing of the outage, combined with TikTok’s ownership transition, is interesting. It is appearing less like a technical malfunction and more like content suppression.
At this point, there is no confirmed independent verification that the power outage explanation fully accounts for what users experienced.
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