The significant problems with the TikTok app last weekend were, according to the company, because of a technical issue stemming from a power outage at a “US data center partner.” Users could not upload new videos and view counts were all out of whack, with few answers or explanations.
For TikTok, the timing was unfortunate. As of last weekend, TikTok US is now TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, owned partially by ByteDance and a collection of investors that include Oracle and investment firms like Silver Lake, among others. For users, the massive outage was suspicious: The involvement of Oracle specifically is regularly cited as a cause for concern by users and creators thanks to cofounder Larry Ellison’s long-standing ties to Donald Trump. TikTok went down just as a new Trump-friendly corporation took over? Interesting coincidence, the thinking goes.
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How a social platform’s algorithm works — and what kind of content is “shadowbanned” — is a never-ending discussion for content creators who rely on these opaque systems to do their job. TikTok specifically is seen by some as a powerful tool to have serious conversations or to elevate stories and narratives that would get lost in the gears of other platforms. The app is also something of a political boogeyman for US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who supported divest-or-ban legislation. TikTok’s future has been up in the air for years, and creators were already pondering last January where they would end up if the app ceased to exist. For some, the Oracle-related outage was the final straw.
“Hi so today I will be downloading my videos and deleting my TikTok page,” the actor and comedian Meg Stalter wrote on Instagram. “[TikTok] is under new ownership and we are being completely censored and monitored.”
Other creators are publicly discussing the possibility of leaving the app, and some are migrating to an app called UpScrolled that claims to be politically “impartial.” The outage also triggered another round of a TikTok folkloric copypasta that resurfaces every so often, urging users to block the Oracle TikTok account in order to “fix” their algorithm if it seems to serve them random videos.
It’s still not entirely clear what will happen to the TikTok algorithm — the US arm says it will “retrain, test, and update” it, but doesn’t specify when or how that will happen. It’s difficult to overstate the impact TikTok has had on the creator industry and social media more broadly — for one, we have TikTok to thank (or blame) for the shift toward slot-machine style recommendation algorithms and an environment where anyone truly could go viral. The platform has reshaped the music industry in its image, buoys millions of users’ shopping habits, and by now has been a primary information source for multiple wars. A major change would destabilize creators’ businesses, brands’ marketing operations, and viewers’ entertainment habits; many people have a lot to lose if TikTok goes full MAGA. There is obviously reason to be concerned: Seizing control of a popular social media app to use it as a personal propaganda machine worked well for Elon Musk and his purchase of Twitter. But even if TikTok does not radically change how it moderates and recommends content, it may have amassed enough ill will from a skeptical user base who have Oracle and Ellison’s Trump ties to point to every time something breaks.
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