Unless you have been buried under a rock this last weekend, you probably heard that TikTok has been hitting the shitter. Within days of the US taking control, it went down faster than Elon taking over Twitter. Reports started coming in on Saturday with funky stuff happening to the algorithm. Posts unable to upload. Suppressed views. Possible censorship. We talked about the finalized deal on this week’s Lazy Geeks. Saying “TikTok has issues” is a bit of an understatement.
“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,” the company said in a statement. “We’re working with our data center partner to stabilize our service. We’re sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon.”
As we mentioned in our episode, the app is running on an Oracle server. As for them being a stakeholder, this isn’t anything new. The company has been a server for TikTok US since 2022.
TikTok Has Issues to Say the Least
In an update several hours later, the company said that the power outage had caused a “cascading systems failure”. It’s still affecting the app and leading to “multiple bugs”. Which includes those affecting view counts and load times. “Creators may temporarily see ‘0’ views or likes on videos, and your earnings may look like they’re missing,” the company wrote in an update on X. “This is a display error caused by server timeouts; your actual data and engagement are safe.”
The issues have caused many people to believe censorship is happening.
Larry Ellison, Oracle’s co-founder, is a close ally of President Trump. Larry’s son, David Ellison, became CEO of Paramount Skydance in August 2025. Since then, he installed conservative pundit Bari Weiss at the helm of CBS News. Who oversaw a series of changes at the news organization that some critics allege made its coverage friendlier to the Trump. Not to mention his obsession with Warner Bros. that won’t sell to him.
This is Causing Some People to Bail
It’s pushing the theory that Oracle’s influence is moving the app toward more conservative content. Some users claim their videos dealing with Minneapolis are immediately flagged “under review”. Which is something I received while posting a memory of my dog. Even now, nine hours later, it has zero views and no likes.
Analytics firm Sensor Tower, which tracks downloads and other app store-related metrics, told CNBC that there has been a 150 percent rise in uninstalls. An indie app has seen an explosion in downloads. UpScrolled has seen a surge in interest over the last few days. The app is currently the ninth most-downloaded app in the US App Store. The second most popular social app (behind Meta’s Threads).
According to reports, UpScrolled looks a bit like Instagram. Users can share photos and shortform videos. The app defaults to a chronological “following” feed. Which is something I like. But, it does also recommend content to users. The app is “privately funded by its founder, Issam Hijazi, together with a small group of individual investors who share our mission and values,” according to an FAQ. It currently has no ads, though the company says it “probably” will in the future.
Is it a Right-Wing Takeover?
I don’t think so. It is possible that it was all a confluence of events. A series of things that give it all bad optics. On a personal note, I have experienced a certain amount of issues. It will sometimes say I cannot comment. On some videos, it will show zero comments when there are hundreds. As I said before about posting my memory video. But I could say the same with Instagram. My feed freezes after a few pictures and videos. When I am looking at a video, the feed randomly refreshes. Does that mean it is going over to a right-wing propaganda app? No.
With that being said, there are some creators online screaming about the new terms of service for TikTok. It is much of the same shit I heard when Threads was released. People kept making huge deals about how much information they were getting from users. However, when you looked at Facebook and Instagram, they were the same information. Eventually, all those creators stopped and joined the app anyway.
In the end, the US version of the app was always going to collect user data. Just look at how much Meta, Google, and Amazon collects. In fact, under US control, TikTok will be grabbing even more data than the original grabbed. It was never about user data protection, but that’s what people bought into. It was about controlling an app that American companies couldn’t compete with. And all the money it could make from the data. It wasn’t about communism. It was about capitalism.
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