TikTok Down: Major Outage Hits US Users Following Ownership Change

Imagine finally winning a long, exhausting battle to keep your favorite app, only for it to stop working the moment the celebration starts. That is exactly what happened to millions of people in the United States this weekend.

Just days after a historic deal saved TikTok from being banned in America, the app suffered a massive technical meltdown. On Sunday, January 25, more than 35,000 users in the U.S. reported that their feeds were frozen, videos were showing zero views, and the famous "For You" page was basically a ghost town.

This is the first test of TikTok’s new life as an "American" company. Here is a simple breakdown of what is actually going on behind the scenes.

For years, the U.S. government argued that TikTok was a security risk because its parent company, ByteDance, is based in China. After a rollercoaster of court cases and political drama, a deal was finally sealed on January 22, 2026.

To stay alive in the U.S., TikTok had to change its DNA. A new company called TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC was formed. Here is how the ownership is split now:

• The American Group (80.1%): This is a consortium led by tech giants Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. They are the new bosses in town.

• ByteDance (19.9%): The original founders have been pushed into a minority role with no operational control over U.S. data.

Essentially, TikTok "moved house." It is still the same app on your phone, but the "landlords" and the servers are now strictly American.

You might be wondering: “If they just changed the owners, why did the app break?” The answer lies in the "brain" of TikTok, its algorithm. Part of the deal requires TikTok to stop using the specific code managed in China. Instead, Oracle is now responsible for hosting all U.S. user data on its own cloud servers.

Engineers are currently "retraining" the algorithm. Think of it like teaching a person a new language using only American books. Because the AI is being re-taught how to recommend videos based strictly on U.S. data and security rules, technical hiccups were bound to happen. Sunday’s outage was likely a side effect of this massive data migration and AI retraining.

When you move millions of users and billions of videos from one server system to another, things tend to get messy.

While the Nigerian version of TikTok is still technically under the global ByteDance umbrella, the U.S. is the world’s biggest trendsetter. If the American algorithm becomes a "domestic bubble" focused only on U.S. data, it could change how Nigerian content travels.

In the past, a dance challenge started in Oregun could go viral in Ohio in hours because the global algorithm was one big, connected web. If the U.S. algorithm becomes more isolated or "retrained" differently, Nigerian creators might find it a bit harder to land on American "For You" pages. We are watching the birth of a "split-internet," where an app might look the same but act differently depending on which border you cross.

The biggest fear for tech lovers is that the new management might accidentally break what made TikTok special. TikTok’s secret sauce was its uncanny ability to know exactly what you wanted to see.

Oracle and Silver Lake are great at enterprise software and finance, but they aren't exactly known for creating viral social media magic. This weekend's outage has users asking: Can the new owners keep the app addictive, or will the "Americanized" version feel clunky and corporate?

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TikTok says the app will remain "interoperable," meaning you can still see videos from other countries. However, the technical transition is clearly going to be a bumpy ride.

As the U.S. team continues to move data into Oracle’s cloud and tweak the new algorithm, we should expect more "glitchy" Sundays. The political war is over, but the technical war to keep TikTok "cool" has just begun.