TikTok has said that recent problems faced by users in the United States were caused by a power outage at one of its data centers and not by political censorship. The outage led to technical failures that affected messaging, video views, and overall app performance.
Users reported issues such as messages not sending, videos showing zero views, and slower load times. Some viral posts claimed TikTok was blocking political content and even certain words in direct messages. While CNBC confirmed that messages containing the word “Epstein” triggered an error, it could not verify wider censorship claims.
TikTok stated that it does not ban political speech and is investigating the messaging issue. The company added that content related to recent political events remains available on the platform and that users may continue to see minor bugs as systems fully recover.
The issues come shortly after TikTok began operating under a new U.S. led joint venture, formed to keep the app running in the country amid ownership and security concerns.
