Users of American TikTok are reporting disruptions in the app's operation, and these problems, it seems, are prompting them to switch to alternative applications, Gizmodo reports, writes UNN.
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According to Appfigures, the five most popular free iPhone apps in the US right now are:
- ChatGPT;
- JumpJumpVPN;
- V2Box;
- UpScrolled;
- Threads.
Apple blogger John Gruber of Daring Fireball published a list of the most popular iPhone apps for all of 2025, and the top five were:
- ChatGPT;
- Threads;
- Google;
- TikTok;
- WhatsApp.
Against this backdrop, the publication notes that "it would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the three apps that suddenly squeezed between ChatGPT and Threads made it onto the list due to dissatisfaction with TikTok." Two of them are VPN apps that theoretically can be used to access TikTok from a virtual network in a country where the American version of TikTok is not needed, and one, UpScrolled, is an Australian video and text sharing app that recently went viral.
This comes at a time when, for TikTok, after years of trying to force the Chinese company ByteDance to relinquish ownership and allow a US-friendly buyer to take over, a legal entity was created earlier this month that could take ownership of TikTok in the country, with Adam Presser becoming its new CEO. This allows TikTok to comply with a new US law that essentially requires TikTok to be run by an American company or be banned.
"However, this structure, a complex joint corporate venture responsible for TikTok's US operations, from the outside, seems to be struggling to maintain order amid data transfer from TikTok's Singapore base (TikTok's US data was already largely stored in the US, so it's unclear whether this transition includes any large and burdensome operations)," the publication states.
According to an X post from TikTok, the problem is that there was a "major infrastructure issue caused by a power outage at one of our partner data centers in the US," and various disruptions, service slowdowns, failures, and user metric problems may occur. Oracle also clarified that TikTok's problem was due to a weather-related power outage at one of its data centers. Oracle owns 15% of the new TikTok U.S. venture.
The problems TikTok refers to perfectly align with user descriptions of issues, such as videos endlessly stuck in review and posts with low or zero views, often despite high engagement metrics like comments or reposts. Other common problems associated with data center outages include possible lack of analytics in TikTok Studio, messages to streamers to immediately stop broadcasting, and irrelevant search results.
"However, TikTok's disruptions, at least in part, are perceived as the technical consequences of a right-wing takeover. This is partly because the 15% of TikTok's US unit owned by Oracle is controlled by right-wing billionaire Larry Ellison, and the transfer of ownership, of course, is facilitated by the Trump administration," the publication says.
"But have TikTok's rules changed noticeably? As far as we know, no," the publication notes.
Gizmodo reached out to the TikTok US joint venture for clarification on the causes of the platform's recent problems and received links to statements on X, including from Oracle, in response.
Around Sunday, TikTok users began writing that they felt their political posts were being censored, the publication writes.
TikTok has not yet commented on these speculations by some of its users.
"But if it's true that users are massively switching to other platforms for political reasons, despite the lack of convincing evidence that the new TikTok US joint venture has already begun to crack down on political speech, it doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong either. Perhaps they are just waiting for changes similar to those that occurred on Twitter after Elon Musk's arrival. Content standards there quickly shifted sharply to the right. Therefore, given this, some TikTok users may simply be leaving preemptively at the first signs of annoying glitches to avoid even more serious changes that they believe are inevitable," the publication states.