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TikTok users in the U.S. are complaining that the app is not working, with thousands of reports of an outage on the video-sharing platform.
Website Downdetector, which tracks problems reported by users, saw a huge spike in complaints at approximately 4:30 p.m. ET, peaking at 32,000 issues by 4:45 p.m. Of those reports, 79 percent said it was a problem with the app, while another 19 percent reported server connection issues.
Users reporting that the popular video site is down initially seemed concentrated in New York, Washington, D.C., Houston, and Seattle.
Some TikTokers report being able to briefly access the app before it went down again.
TikTokers took to the social media platform X to vent their frustrations. An official TikTok support account on that platform has not posted since July 6, 2021. There has been no announcement from the TikTok communications team either.
The app skyrocketed in popularity in the U.S. in 2019, and by 2024, about 170 million Americans used the platform. One-third of adults in the U.S. told Pew Research that they use the app, up from 21 percent in 2021.
In early April, President Donald Trump extended the deadline for TikTok to find a U.S. buyer by an additional 75 days to “ensure all necessary approvals are signed,” while preventing the popular social media app from going dark in America.
On his first day in office, Trump delayed the app’s ban via an executive order, giving the Chinese-based owner, ByteDance, until April 5 to find a U.S. buyer.
The administration was reportedly nearing a TikTok deal, but the Chinese government halted the talks after the president implemented more tariffs on China.
Under a bipartisan bill passed last year and signed by former President Joe Biden, ByteDance must sell TikTok to a U.S.-based company, or the app will be banned from U.S. servers such as the App Store and Google.
