TikTok is down—or at least glitchy—for a large number of users across the United States on Tuesday, with the company pointing the finger at yet another Oracle data center issue. The TikTok USDS Joint Venture confirmed on X that “an issue with an Oracle data center is impacting some parts of the TikTok U.S. user experience,” adding that creators may face temporary lags while posting content. Oracle, for its part, acknowledged that some of its cloud customers in its Ashburn facility have been dealing with connection timeouts, errors, and increased latency over the past few hours.According to Downdetector, outage reports started climbing just before 1 pm ET and spiked again around 3:30 pm, with thousands of complaints pouring in by evening. New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, and Washington were among the cities where users flagged problems.
Oracle’s cloud troubles are becoming a pattern for TikTok’s US operations
This is the second time TikTok has gone down because of an Oracle-related issue since the US sale was finalised earlier this year. Back in late January, just days after the TikTok USDS Joint Venture deal closed, a weather-related power outage at an Oracle data center triggered what TikTok described as a “cascading systems failure.” That incident messed with the app’s recommendation algorithm, left creators staring at zero views on fresh uploads, and even sparked conspiracy theories about the new investors manipulating the For You page.Oracle is part of the investor group—alongside Silver Lake and MGX—that now controls 80% of TikTok’s US operations. The joint venture was set up to comply with a national security law that required ByteDance to divest its American TikTok business or face a ban.
Why repeated outages matter for TikTok’s new chapter in the US
For an app trying to rebuild trust under new ownership, back-to-back outages tied to its own infrastructure partner aren’t a great look. Oracle hasn’t yet identified the cause of Tuesday’s disruption, and TikTok has said it will keep users updated as the situation develops.
