By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) – Oracle on Tuesday said issues faced by U.S. users of social media app TikTok are the result of a temporary weather-related power outage at an Oracle data center, after California Governor Gavin Newsom linked the issues to what he called the suppression of content critical of President Donald Trump.
“Over the weekend, an Oracle data center experienced a temporary weather-related power outage which impacted TikTok,” Oracle spokesperson Michael Egbert said in an email.
A powerful winter storm struck much of the U.S. over the weekend.
“The challenges U.S. TikTok users may be experiencing are the result of technical issues that followed the power outage, which Oracle and TikTok are working to quickly resolve,” Egbert said.
On Monday, Newsom said his office was launching a review to determine if TikTok’s content moderation practices violated state law.
“Following TikTok’s sale to a Trump-aligned business group, our office has received reports – and independently confirmed instances – of suppressed content critical of President Trump,” Newsom’s office had said.
TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, last week finalized a deal to set up a majority U.S.-owned joint venture known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC that will secure U.S. data, to avert a ban on the short video app used by more than 200 million Americans. The deal was praised by Trump.
The joint venture has denied censorship, saying “it would be inaccurate to report that this (issues faced by U.S. users) is anything but the technical issues we’ve transparently confirmed.”
Each of the joint venture’s three managing investors – cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX – will hold a stake of 15%. The deal provides for American and global investors to hold 80.1% of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9%.
The joint venture said on Tuesday it “made significant progress in recovering our U.S. infrastructure with our U.S. data center partner” but noted that U.S. users may still face some technical issues, including when posting new content.
With more than 16 million followers on his personal TikTok account, Trump credited the app with helping him win the 2024 election.
Last week’s deal was a milestone for TikTok after years of battles with the U.S. government over Washington’s concerns about risks to national security and privacy under Trump and former President Joe Biden.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Tom Hogue and Christopher Cushing)
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