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Tag: tiktok deal

  • TikTok says its services are restored after the outage | TechCrunch

    TikTok, which is under new ownership in the U.S., said Sunday that it has restored service after outages last week that marred user experiences. The social network has over 220 million users in the U.S.

    The company blamed last week’s snowstorm, which caused an outage at an Oracle-operated data center responsible for TikTok operations.

    “We have successfully restored TikTok back to normal after a significant outage caused by winter weather took down a primary U.S. data center site operated by Oracle. The winter storm led to a power outage which caused network and storage issues at the site and impacted tens of thousands of servers that help keep TikTok running in the U.S. This affected many of TikTok’s core features—from content posting and discovery to the real-time display of video likes and view counts,” the company said in a post on X.

    In January, the U.S. finalized the deal to create a separate entity for TikTok. A U.S.-based investor consortium called TikTok USDS took a controlling 80% stake, with the remaining 20% ownership held by ByteDance.

    Following the deal finalization — which coincided with the snowstorm — users experienced glitches in features like posting, searching within the app, slower load times, and time-outs. TikTok noted that creators might see zero views on their posts until the problem was resolved. Later, the company said that it was working on solving the issue, but outages persisted, and users faced problems with posting content.

    TikTok’s transition to a new ownership structure, paired with app snafus and user experience glitches, was beneficial for some other social networks. The Mark Cuban-backed short video app Skylight, which is built on the AT protocol, saw its user base soar to more than 380,000 users in the week the deal was finalized. Upscrolled, a social network by Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist Issam Hijazi, also climbed in App Store rankings to reach the second spot in the social media category in the U.S. The app was downloaded 41,000 times within days of the TikTok deal’s finalization, according to analyst firm AppFigures.

    Techcrunch event

    Boston, MA
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    June 23, 2026

    Ivan Mehta

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  • Trump signs executive order to facilitate TikTok deal | TechCrunch

    President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that essentially approves of the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to an American investor group in order to keep the social media app operational in the country. Vice President JD Vance said that the deal would value TikTok US at “around $14 billion.”

    TikTok was required to divest its American business, or be banned in the U.S., via a national security law originally signed by former President Joe Biden. Trump’s executive order essentially bars the Attorney General or Department of Justice from enforcing that law for 120 days while the divestiture plan presented to the President is executed.

    TikTok’s owner ByteDance has not yet publicly acknowledged the deal or executive order, but did, on September 19, issue a statement that “it will work in accordance with applicable laws to ensure TikTok remains available to American users through TikTok U.S.”

    Trump said China’s President Xi Jinping spoke to him and gave him approval.

    “I spoke with President Xi, we had a good talk,” Trump said during a briefing with reporters. “I told him what we were doing, and he said, ‘Go ahead with it.”

    The order states that TikTok’ U.S. operations will establish a new board of directors, and that the app’s recommendation algorithm, source code, and content moderation system in the US will be transferred to the control of its new owners. Under the deal’s terms, Oracle will oversee the app’s security operations and provide computing services for TikTok US.

    “It’s owned by Americans, and very sophisticated Americans,” Trump said during the briefing. “This is going to be American operated all the way.”

    Techcrunch event

    San Francisco
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    October 27-29, 2025

    Trump said that Oracle would be among the U.S. investors in TikTok US, but did not disclose the full list of new owners. CNBC reports that Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX will get a 45 percent stake in TikTok’s US company.

    “This deal really does mean Americans can use TikTok but actually use it with more confidence than they had in the past because their data is secure and it won’t be used as a propaganda weapon like it has in the past,” Vance said.

    During the briefing, Trump stated that “every group, every philosophy, every policy will be treated fairly” after being asked if the algorithm would show MAGA-related content following the deal.

    Trump last week signed signed an executive order that extended ByteDance’s deadline to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or be banned. This marked the fourth time that Trump extended the deadline.

    Trump initiated the push to ban TikTok in 2020, and the idea later received bipartisan backing during Biden’s administration.

    Aisha Malik

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