TikTok’s new US business, led by a group of mainly American investors approved by President Donald Trump, is off to an inauspicious start.
The wildly popular TikTok app has been on the fritz for several days. While other social media sites have been full of speculation that the Trump-aligned joint venture is suppressing criticism, TikTok insists otherwise, and says the trouble stemmed from a power outage at a data center belonging to Oracle, one of the key investors in the US entity.
TikTok said Tuesday morning that it has made “significant progress” restoring service on the platform, but users “may still have some technical issues, including when posting new content.”
Later in the day, an Oracle spokesperson said that “over the weekend, an Oracle data center experienced a temporary weather-related power outage which impacted TikTok.”
“The challenges U.S. TikTok users may be experiencing are the result of technical issues that followed the power outage, which Oracle and TikTok are working to quickly resolve,” the spokesperson added.
Nevertheless, some Democratic politicians are seizing on the public’s suspicions about political foul play.
“It’s time to investigate,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday night. “I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content.”
Newsom’s press office said it had “received reports — and independently confirmed instances — of suppressed content critical of President Trump.” Thus, the press office said, the governor wants state attorney general Rob Bonta “to determine whether it violates California law.”
In a deal required by Congress and brokered by Trump, a consortium of investors took control of TikTok’s US user data and most of its US operations last week. Key investors like Oracle, led by Larry Ellison, are close Trump allies.
Oracle and the other non-Chinese investors own about 80% of the new entity, with Beijing-based ByteDance keeping the rest.
Critics of the new arrangement have questioned whether the new investors will give TikTok a Trumpian makeover and manipulate the app to assist Trump and other Republicans in future elections.
Elon Musk made similar changes to Twitter when he acquired the social media platform and renamed it X.
