January 26, 2026
TikTok is acting weird right now. That’s a fact.
Videos are not being recommended. Including my own. You’re seeing old content. And if you post something new—it just sits there at zero views. For those of you in the creator rewards program – your dashboard may be down.
So WTF. What is going on?
Well – TikTok knows it’s a problem. The new US TikTok joint venture – meaning the new US owners just posted this to their brand new X account saying…. “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. We’re sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon.”
So – TikTok US is saying this power outage at one of their data centers – which of course are operated by oracle – went down because of a power outage and that power outage is impacting the way TikTok and its other apps are functioning….which could explain the problems with seeing old videos or having zero views on new videos you post. Both of those things are directly connected to the recommendation function of the algorithm. So that’s one explanation.
But that is not stopping TikTok users from connecting the dots in another way. Lots of people are also saying this weird buggy TikTok is coming at a curious time…just two days after the new US owners took over and one day after the shooting in Minnesota that has led to lots of people posting videos critical of ice and president trump’s immigration crack down. Many TikTok users say the new US TikTok owners are censoring their videos. When you go to the search bar and search ICE Minnesota or even Alex Pretti – you definitely see videos that are critical of ice – those videos do exist but they are one or two days old. And when you search cat videos – those definitely exist but those are also old. But no one watches TikTok that way. Users normally rely on the for you feed. Which obviously is not functioning properly right now.
So when will TikTok start functioning properly again? All TikTok has said is “soon.” So it’s unclear what that means. I am in contact with TikTok and as soon as I get an update I will of course let you know.
