It's been just over a week since TikTok U.S. officially took over the service for American users, and the transition hasn't gone as smoothly as expected.
Advertisers have reported multiple issues with TikTok Ad Manager with some campaigns overspending and others not being delivered at all. On top of that, there were many reports of TikTok Shop having problems with an algorithm malfunction that affected the content users see.
TIkTok's new ownership team, which includes Oracle, Silver Lake, MGX, and others, said in a statement:
“Holy shit, this is harder than we thought! How are the Chinese so much better at technology than we are?! And they have universal healthcare and provide up to 180 days of maternity leave? We may have fucked up…”
Alright, I'm just kidding. They actually said:
“We’ve made significant progress in recovering our U.S. infrastructure with our U.S. data center partner. However, the U.S. user experience may still have some technical issues, including when posting new content. We’re committed to bringing TikTok back to its full capacity as soon as possible. We’ll continue to provide updates.”
The company also confirmed a major infrastructure issue that impacted the app for thousands of users caused by a power outage at one of its U.S. data center partner sites. The big hand-off was coming and no-one paid the power bill?
I'm an American citizen currently living overseas in Ecuador, and there was a few day period where all my American content disappeared and my feed became filled with Latin American comedy skits and Spanish-speaking telenovela clips. Now it's returned to my normal English-speaking time wasters.
Meanwhile, aside from technical difficulties, the new TikTok U.S. is losing trust with its userbase over privacy concerns and censorship.
The Guardian reports that many TikTok users across the country say they're rethinking their relationship with the platform since its ownership change, citing censorship and lack of trust as reasons why they're removing themselves from the app. The daily average of U.S. users deleting the app increased 195% from Jan 22nd to the 28th compared to the previous 90 days.
After the murder of Alex Pretti by ICE agents on Jan 24th, some content creators reported that videos condemning the agency were being suppressed by TikTok, prompting California Governor Gavin Newsom to launch an investigation into the platform and whether it is violating California law by censoring anti-Trump content. The “censorship” may ultimately prove to have just been app-wide technical issues, but Newsom certainly wouldn't miss this opportunity to pour gasoline on public outrage as he gears up for his run for presidency.
