UPDATED: TikTok videos were not loading for many users across the U.S. Tuesday, amid what appeared to be a widespread technical outage for the popular short-form video platform. The issues lasted more than five hours before they were resolved.
Problem reports for the app shot up at about 3:45 p.m. ET Tuesday, per monitoring site DownDetector. Most of the user-reported issues (70%) were related to videos not loading, according to the site. Another 25% of users said they had problems logging in and 5% of issues reported were related to uploading videos.
TikTok’s support account on Twitter confirmed the problems in a tweet but did not provide information on the cause.“The TikTok app is currently experiencing some issues, which our team is working quickly to address. Thank you for your patience!” the account tweeted at 4:28 p.m. ET.
More than four and half hours later, TikTok Support posted at 9:08 p.m. ET that the problems were remedied and that “Your app experience should be returning to normal.”
Last week, TikTok — owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance — announced that it would expand the maximum video length for all users, from 60 seconds to three minutes. The ability to share longer videos is supposed to roll out over the course of several weeks.
With TikTok out of commission, unhappy users took to other social media to vent and joke about the situation (as is often the case when a popular app goes down).
Saw charli on my fy page and I ran to twitter to see if tiktok was down because my algorithm was all messed up #tiktokdown pic.twitter/podB2kwbVz
— Janet (@JanetM355) July 6, 2021
all of us rn waiting for tiktok to get itself together #tiktokdown pic.twitter/qBUkJrhAky
— 5AYLA (@theendofkayla) July 6, 2021
TikTok rn after showing us how addicted we are #tiktokdown pic.twitter/HTBjzJsVnm
— laney :) (@laneysvibes) July 6, 2021
Meanwhile, the Biden administration last month officially revoked Donald Trump’s executive orders that sought to ban TikTok over alleged national security concerns. At the same time, President Biden also ordered the Commerce Department to investigate apps with ties to foreign adversaries that may pose a risk to U.S. data privacy or national security.
