TikTok faces app deletions, censorship claims and glitches in days after its ownership change

Censorship claims, technical problems and a report of a surge in app deletions are just some of the challenges TikTok is facing as it adjusts to a new ownership structure in the United States that was finalized last week.The company said Monday it was experiencing a “major infrastructure issue triggered by a power outage” at one of its U.S.

data center partner sites.The outage led to bugs such as creators temporarily seeing zero views on their videos even if people had looked at them, as well as slow load times and timeout requests when posting videos.

On Tuesday, TikTok said it had made significant progress restoring services though users could still see glitches while using the popular video sharing app.At the same time, users were raising concerns that the company is “censoring” videos, including ones critical of President Donald Trump, ICE or mentions of Jeffrey Epstein.

The complaints were enough for California Gov.Gavin Newsom to announce on X Monday that he is launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content.Jamie Favazza, a spokesperson for TikTok's new U.S.

joint venture, said it is inaccurate to say that the problems users have been encountering are “anything but the technical issues we’ve transparently confirmed.”Still, the technical problems combined with the ties that some of the new owners have to Trump bristled some U.S.users just enough to delete the app.

Market intelligence firm Sensor Tower said Tuesday that daily average app uninstalls grew 130% from Jan.22 to Jan.

26 compared with the previous 30 days.However, daily average users still increased by 2% in the same period, which Sensor Tower says suggests the uninstalls had little effect on overall usage.

And while TikTok lagged YouTube and Instagram in U.S.user growth, people spent more time on the platform than its rivals.

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