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Oracle Explains TikTok Outage After Weather-Related Data Center Power Failure

Oracle

Business Honor
28 January, 2026

Oracle claimed that a weather-related power outage caused TikTok disruptions, denying censorship claims as political scrutiny and infrastructure recovery continue.

A brief weather-related power outage at one of Oracle's US data centers caused the service disruption that impacted TikTok users nationwide over the weekend, according to the company's explanation. The company admitted that TikTok's services for American users had been affected by technical issues caused by the outage.

Power infrastructure was damaged and an Oracle cloud infrastructure outage US incident occurred as a result of a powerful winter storm that swept across the nation. According to Oracle spokesperson Michael Egbert, the power outage affected TikTok-supporting systems and caused deeper service problems. The Oracle and TikTok teams are collaborating hard to fix the platform and completely restore normal operations.

The TikTok US data centre disruption quickly became a political issue. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, suggested that the issues might be related to the alleged censoring of information that is critical of US President Donald Trump. Citing concerns of limited political content, Newsom's office said on January 26 that a US TikTok content moderation investigation will begin to look into whether TikTok's moderation policies violated state law.

This comes after ByteDance, the parent business of TikTok, underwent a significant reorganization and established TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, a US-based organization. The action aims to protect American user data and avoid a possible app ban. The agreement strengthens the growing TikTok USDS joint venture Oracle's involvement in handling TikTok's US infrastructure, with Oracle, private equity company Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX each holding a 15% ownership. American and international investors collectively own 80.1% of the venture, with ByteDance holding a 19.9% ownership position.

The joint venture rejected charges of censorship, stating that users' problems are technical rather than political. Yesterday it reported that their services had been restored but additionally warned that some users may still experience issues related to the impact of the Oracle data center power outage. This incident suggests the value of dependable cloud infrastructure as TikTok undergoes political and regulatory pressure.