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Carley Hayes,Technology reporter
Getty ImagesTikTok has dismissed claims that its new U.S. business tightly controls what users post after thousands of people reported outages on the video streaming platform.
In a response to the BBC, a spokesperson for TikTok US reiterated an earlier statement, pointing to technical issues as the cause of the problem since it became an independent US entity last week.
“We have made significant progress with our U.S. data center partners in restoring U.S. infrastructure,” they said. “However, there may still be some technical issues with the U.S. user experience, including when releasing new content.”
They also refuted users’ claims that the name “Epstein” cannot be used on TikTok.
It refers to late sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein. The Trump administration continues to face intense scrutiny over its handling of the Epstein case.
TikTok said there are no rules against sharing the name “Epstein” in private messages.
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an investigation into allegations that TikTok censored content critical of the Trump administration, even as the company said problems with the platform were being addressed.
Last Thursday, a deal was reached to divest the app’s U.S. operations — three days after thousands of U.S. users began reporting issues, including seeing “zero views” on new posts.
Many people also report being unable to see political posts, such as critical content federal agent shooting Photo of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse in Minneapolis on Saturday.
Newsom’s office said it has received confirmed reports that TikTok is suppressing content critical of President Donald Trump.
“Following the sale of TikTok to a Trump-aligned business group, our office received reports and independently confirmed instances of the suppression of President Trump’s content,” the California governor’s office wrote. Monday.
His post linked to another user
The statement said Newsom would “launch a review of the content” and investigate whether the company violated state laws.
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According to social media posts seen by BBC News, the same flag appears to have been raised when other US TikTok users tried to message other people with Epstein’s surname.
Many users have speculated that this, combined with some political content not showing up in the app’s For You feed or search, could be censorship TikTok’s new American owner – Some believe investors and directors have ties to Trump.
Celebrities have expressed similar concerns about the app.
“Hacks” actress Meg Stalter told Instagram fans on Sunday that she had deleted her TikTok account because the app “has new ownership and we are being fully scrutinized and monitored.”
Similar sentiments were echoed on social media, with many US users questioning whether the app was “cooked” in posts.
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“extremely slow”
Users of the US video-sharing app have been posting on social media about the problems during the outage, which began on Sunday.
Platform outage monitor DownDetector told the BBC that it had received 663,061 problem reports from TikTok US users between Saturday and Monday.
“Well, other people’s TikTok is very slow, keeps showing you old videos, doesn’t show you what you’re actually searching for, and doesn’t load certain things…” one X user asked on Sunday.
Some users said they were unable to view the creator monetization tools on the app, and others noticed that the visibility of new videos they uploaded to the platform was different than usual, or was “stuck at zero views.”
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American owner of TikTok Monday said Users may notice “multiple errors, slow load times, or request timeouts” as it works to resolve issues caused by an outage at one of its data center partner Oracle sites.
“While the network has been restored, the outage resulted in a cascading system failure, which we have been working with our data center partners to resolve,” it said.
The company also sought to reassure users that their data and content participation “is safe.”
Like many other issues reported to have affected the TikTok app and its sister app CapCut since Sunday, the issues appear to be mostly limited to the United States.
As part of Trump’s agreement to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States, Oracle will inspect and retrain a separate version of its algorithm for American users.
The cloud giant is one of three managing investors in TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, holding a 15% stake in the spun-off U.S. entity.
