TikTok confirms power outage behind low view counts and glitches amid censorship rumors in US

If you’ve been staring at a “0 views” counter and wondering if the TikTok overlords finally came for you, you can relax. It wasn’t a shadowban, and it wasn’t the new owners scrubbing your content. It’s just that the app is going through a rough patch.

Tensions were already sky-high this month. Last week, we highlighted the panic when users were hit with pop-ups to accept new terms following the creation of the new USDS Joint Venture.

That freaked people out enough, but then we had to explain how the privacy policy stuff — like the immigration status and sexual orientation data collection — was actually added back in 2024. Nobody was really listening to the nuance, though. They were just scared.

Then, the app started glitching and turned into a dumpster fire for most users in the US.

As we reported yesterday, the For You Page turned into the For Generic Page. People were seeing irrelevant content, and worse, their fresh uploads were getting stuck in review or showing zero engagement. People were also taking to Reddit to complain about seeing “something went wrong” errors and connection timeouts. Here’s a screenshot of some of the many threads on the r/TikTok subreddit:

Because the timing was so suspicious, the internet did what it does best: it panicked. Rumors spread like wildfire that the new US management was actively censoring creators. Forbes even jumped on it, reporting that top Democrats and huge influencers were raising concerns about the sudden drop in reach.

But finally, TikTok US issued a statement on X, and the truth is way less exciting than a conspiracy theory. It was just the lights going out. Here’s the complete statement:

We’re continuing to resolve a major infrastructure issue triggered by a power outage at one of our U.S. data center partner sites. While the network has been recovered, the outage caused a cascading systems failure that we’ve been working to resolve together with our data center partner.

What this means for your TikTok experience:

You may notice multiple bugs, slower load times, or timed-out requests, including when posting new content.

Creators may temporarily see “0” views or likes on videos, and your earnings may look like they’re missing. This is a display error caused by server timeouts; your actual data and engagement are safe.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to bring TikTok back to full capacity as soon as we can.

TikTok USDS JV

So, if your analytics look like they crashed, don’t delete your account. TikTok swears your data is safe and the “missing” earnings are just a display error caused by server timeouts. They’re calling it a “cascading systems failure,” which is just a fancy way of saying the dominoes fell over when the power flickered.

That said, it looks like TikTok might be a little too late with its statement. Following all these concerns and rumors, some users have already uninstalled the app and are moving to alternatives like UpScrolled.

But if you’re still on TikTok, don’t fret the low views or buggy experience. The platform is not shadowbanning your account. Even though there’s no ETA for a fix, we suspect that things should get back to normal within the next couple of days or so, if not earlier. 

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