TikTok is Back to Normal After Days of Outages Caused by Winter Storms
Following weeks of disruptions due to winter storms, TikTok has confirmed that its service has returned to normal. The US data center site operated by Oracle was affected by the severe weather, causing a major outage that impacted users nationwide.
The problems began on January 26 when the platform announced it was working on a "major infrastructure issue" and warned of bugs, time-out requests, missing earnings, and other issues. Progress was reportedly made the following day, but some problems persisted, with creators experiencing temporary display errors that resulted in zero views or likes on their videos and affected earnings.
TikTok assured users that their data and engagement were safe, attributing the issues to server timeouts. However, the platform's update on February 1 came after just a few hours of silence, sparking skepticism among some users who had grown frustrated with the ongoing outages.
The recent technical issues have led to a decline in user engagement, with several US users uninstalling TikTok in response to its new ownership and concerns over censorship. A report by The Guardian revealed that many users experienced issues sharing content related to immigration enforcement, such as videos featuring ICE agents and anti-ICE activists.
Industry analysts have also noted the impact of the outages on app usage, with uninstalls increasing by over 150% in a single week compared to pre-change in ownership data. Meanwhile, competitors like UpScrolled saw a surge in downloads during this time.
With service now back online, TikTok is urging users to continue relying on the platform for content creation and community engagement.
Following weeks of disruptions due to winter storms, TikTok has confirmed that its service has returned to normal. The US data center site operated by Oracle was affected by the severe weather, causing a major outage that impacted users nationwide.
The problems began on January 26 when the platform announced it was working on a "major infrastructure issue" and warned of bugs, time-out requests, missing earnings, and other issues. Progress was reportedly made the following day, but some problems persisted, with creators experiencing temporary display errors that resulted in zero views or likes on their videos and affected earnings.
TikTok assured users that their data and engagement were safe, attributing the issues to server timeouts. However, the platform's update on February 1 came after just a few hours of silence, sparking skepticism among some users who had grown frustrated with the ongoing outages.
The recent technical issues have led to a decline in user engagement, with several US users uninstalling TikTok in response to its new ownership and concerns over censorship. A report by The Guardian revealed that many users experienced issues sharing content related to immigration enforcement, such as videos featuring ICE agents and anti-ICE activists.
Industry analysts have also noted the impact of the outages on app usage, with uninstalls increasing by over 150% in a single week compared to pre-change in ownership data. Meanwhile, competitors like UpScrolled saw a surge in downloads during this time.
With service now back online, TikTok is urging users to continue relying on the platform for content creation and community engagement.
but seriously, can't they just get their act together?! 
These outages were causing so much stress and disruption to creators who rely on the app for their livelihoods. And now, with all these new ownership concerns, it's like, why bother even downloading the app? 
I mean, I know some people love the platform, but come on, can't they just be more reliable?! 
. And honestly, I think these outages were a blessing in disguise for other social media apps like UpScrolled that saw a surge in downloads 
. It's not fair to say TikTok is all about "censorship" though - I mean, who needs to see ICE agents or anti-ICE activists on their For You page? 
Not me, that's for sure! But seriously, it's good to know our data and engagement are safe 
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. we gotta be grateful for the times when things are stable & work smoothly cuz that's what makes them worth appreciating 
. and also on a related note, it's crazy how much of an impact something like this can have on people's behavior - some users even uninstalled the app because of concerns over censorship 
what if they just shut down forever? but it's all good now they're back up 
can't believe how much of a decline in user engagement though, like, 150% uninstalls is crazy!!! 
i mean, i'm not surprised tho, given the whole new ownership thing and concerns over censorship... 
. it's crazy how quickly we can go from feeling connected to feeling completely disconnected 
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. like, isn't that kinda... contradictory? shouldn't we be able to trust our favorite platforms with our personal info if everything's gonna work smoothly? 
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. It's crazy how much of an impact the outages had on user engagement - lots of people are like 'forget TikTok' 
. And yeah, I've seen some pretty suspicious stuff being censored too... not sure what's going on there