TikTok’s New US Management Faces Trial by Fire as Outages Fuel Censorship Claims
A localized power outage at a U.S. data center has snowballed into a legitimacy crisis for TikTok’s new American owners. The TikTok USDS (US Data Security) Joint Venture, the entity recently formed to decouple the app from ByteDance, spent the weekend battling service disruptions that critics argue look suspiciously like a botched attempt at content moderation.
Infrastructure Failure Hits "New" TikTok
"Since yesterday we’ve been working to restore our services following a power outage at a U.S. data center," the TikTok USDS venture stated via its newly minted account on X. The company claims the disruption rippled through the app’s core architecture, but the explanation hasn't silenced skeptics who point to the timing of the failure. The outage arrived just days after the platform’s high-stakes restructuring was finalized, leaving Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX as the primary stewards of the American business.
This transition was the culmination of the "Project Texas" initiative, a multi-year effort designed to convince federal regulators that U.S. user data and algorithmic integrity were beyond the reach of Beijing. The current chaos suggests that the hand-off to Oracle’s cloud infrastructure—a system that has faced its own share of reliability questions in the past—has been anything but seamless.
Technical Glitches or Systemic Silencing?
The "power outage" narrative fails to explain the specific, surgical nature of the glitches reported by millions of users. While Downdetector logged thousands of complaints regarding comment loading and "For You" page resets, the most glaring issue was a "zero-view bug" that effectively ghosted new uploads.
Engineers and digital rights analysts are questioning how a localized hardware failure would specifically corrupt the metadata tags responsible for view counts while leaving the video delivery network partially functional. This "infrastructure issue" coincided perfectly with a surge of activism in Minneapolis following a fatal ICE shooting during a federal immigration sweep. On rival platforms like Threads and Bluesky, creators documented instances where posts tagged with #MinneapolisProtest or #ICEUpdate were hidden or suppressed, while trivial lifestyle content continued to circulate.
Jamie Favazza, head of communications for TikTok USDS, dismissed the censorship allegations as "unfounded." According to Favazza, the delays in content circulation are a byproduct of the system being in a "state of recovery." However, for a venture predicated on the promise of radical transparency and domestic oversight, "technical difficulties" is proving to be an insufficient defense.
Regulatory Pressure Mounts in California
California Governor Gavin Newsom is the first major official to move against the "new" TikTok. On Monday, Newsom announced a formal review into whether the platform is violating state-level consumer protection and free speech laws by suppressing content critical of the current administration’s immigration policies.
"California will investigate if TikTok is violating state laws by censoring Trump-critical content," Newsom posted on Threads, signaling that the platform’s new management will not enjoy a regulatory honeymoon.
For Oracle’s Larry Ellison and the other domestic investors, the incident represents a catastrophic failure of the USDS promise. The venture was built to ensure the algorithm couldn't be manipulated; yet, in its first week of full operation, it has produced an "unexplained" algorithmic event that mimics the very interference it was designed to prevent. Whether the culprit is a genuine power failure amidst recent U.S. snowstorms or a deeper flaw in the new management's moderation protocols, the "new" TikTok is already facing a massive deficit of public trust.