TikTok is the social media sensation that all of Silicon Valley — and a lot of Washington, DC — has their eyes on. The app, created by ByteDance, became famous for rocketing musicians and dancers to stardom. But as its popularity and influence have grown, so has scrutiny of its privacy policies, security, and influence, with legislators voicing concern about its ownership by a Chinese firm. Meanwhile, social media competitors are doing everything they can to knock off TikTok’s features and usurp its short-form video dominance.
It follows Snap in reaching an agreement to resolve the first of several cases slated to go to trial this year about social media’s alleged harm to users, an attorney for the 19-year-old plaintiff confirmed. That leaves Meta and YouTube as defendants in the case going to jury selection today.
TikTok’s US service crashed early Sunday morning, and as of late Monday night, it still hasn’t fully recovered.
After finally announcing the problem started with a power outage at an unnamed partner’s data center, TikTok USDS followed up with an updated statement saying, “While the network has been recovered, the outage caused a cascading systems failure that we’ve been working to resolve together with our data center partner,” and listing some of the bugs users are experiencing. There’s still no ETA for a full fix.
Despite claims floating around social media, the truth is a bit more complicated, not least by the fact that TikTok in the US is still largely down, about a day and a half after its data center power outage problems started.
While tweets from random users, the governor of California, and PopBase claimed TikTok US DMs now censor “Epstein,” testing it from our end showed that its messaging feature bans many innocuous single-word messages, like “test.” Using the convicted sex offender’s name in a sentence, however, goes through unbanned.
Oracle and a group of investors now control TikTok in the US, and promise to retrain the app’s algorithm on US user data. Though TikTok blames some of the issues users experienced over the weekend on a power outage, many are still concerned about how their feed could change.
Whether this is just a regular outage or a result of this week’s changes in management, reports tracked on Downdetector and Reddit confirm many people are having trouble loading TikTok right now.
If the mobile app loads, it’s not consistently showing comments or other features, and the algorithm managing the For You page doesn’t feel like it’s working correctly.
Update, January 26th: TikTok is still having problems in the US, which it says are connected to a data center power outage.
It’s been a long, confusing, and at times tiresome saga, but according to Semafor, the Chinese and U.S. governments have given the green light for ByteDance to sell TikTok’s American arm. The target closing date set back in December was today, January 22nd, 2026.
TikTok will roll out new age detection technology in Europe that uses profile information, posts, and “behavioral signals” to guess if a user is under 13, then flags suspected accounts for moderators to review, reports Reuters.
As part of a partnership between TikTok and FIFA, select media partners can livestream “parts of” World Cup matches as well as “post more curated clips and access special content produced by FIFA for TikTok.”
During Semafor’s Mixed Signals podcast, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said TikTok is “very much applying lessons they’ve learned in China to the rest of the world:”
Super apps, which are very popular in China, are not popular in the same way outside of China, and I think they’re turning into a Chinese super app — and that may or may not work outside of China.
“Grow up, Mr. President. Grow up, Brendan Carr.”
US-based car reviewers are going gaga over Chinese EVs. Their audiences wonder why they can’t buy them.
Lawmakers who passed the bill that should have banned TikTok by now are staying quiet about how it’s played out.
TikTok is partnering with iHeartMedia to launch a podcast network featuring up to 25 shows hosted by TikTok creators. Additionally, a new TikTok Radio station will pair TikTokers with iHeartRadio hosts, broadcasting shows nationwide “where listeners will feel like they are scrolling on TikTok, but with their ears.”
The convoluted saga of Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively, and It Ends With Us is still raging on social media, thanks to influencers.
The social media giants have agreed to boot users under 16 from their platforms by the December 10th deadline, but are still voicing skepticism about the policy’s enforcement and effectiveness.
Correction: YouTube has also said it disagrees with the law, but has not said it will comply.
Reuters: Their comments represented a shift in the social media industry’s response to the law, which is being watched by lawmakers around the world as concern grows about youth mental health. Under the Australian law, platforms must take “reasonable steps” to block users aged less than 16 or face a fine of up to A$49.5 million ($32.5 million).
From now on, whenever I get an email from a company raising its subscription prices (which happens approximately 40 times a week), I’m just going to reply with a link to this TikTok.
TikTok is just the latest prize in the Silicon Valley billionaire’s second act as a media mogul.
Fun tidbits here, including that if all the proposed acquisitions and mergers go through, “portfolio and power could exceed those of fabled predecessors like Hearst and Pulitzer.” This is to say nothing of the broader family’s holdings.
[nytimes.com]
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that six of the seven board seats will be held by Americans, ByteDance retain less than a 20-percent stake, and that Americans’ data will be stored in the US with no access give to China.
According to Bloomberg Leavitt said:
“So all of those details have already been agreed upon, now we just need this deal to be signed and that will be happening, I anticipate, in the coming days.”
