Frustrated TikTok Users Keep Getting a "System Busy" Message — Here's What We Know

In January 2026, TikTok officially changed hands to U.S. investors in order to keep running under Trump's executive order calling for U.S. ownership. While ByteDance still has a minority stake in the app, about 80 percent is now owned by American and international investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX.

Since the app switched over, TikTok users have reported a slew of different issues: videos not posting, videos getting zero views, "for you" pages not working correctly, and now a "system busy" message. Here's what we know about what's going on.

TikTok's U.S. Joint Venture X account announced that a power outage at one of its U.S. data centers caused issues with the app and other apps it operates. "We're working with our data center partner to stabilize our service," it wrote, adding, "We're sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon." This message was posted in the morning on Jan. 26.

In the afternoon of the same day, the account posted another message about its "work to restore and stabilize TikTok." It explained that it was "continuing to resolve a major infrastructure issue" caused by the data center power outage. It said that the network has been recovered, but the outage caused a "cascading systems failure."

TikTok warned users that they may see bugs, slower load times, and timed-out requests. "Creators may temporarily see '0' views or likes on videos, and your earnings may look like they're missing," it wrote. They assured content creators that these things are simply errors caused by server timeouts, and that their "actual data and engagement are safe."

On Tuesday, Jan. 27, the TikTok U.S. Joint Venture account posted another update saying that it had made progress "recovering [its] U.S. infrastructure" with its data center partner, but U.S. users may still have technical issues. It wrote, "We're committed to bringing TikTok back to its full capacity as soon as possible." The account thanked users for their patience and said that it will provide updates as it can.

Comments are disabled on the TikTok USDS Joint Venture posts.

Some people claim that their app started glitching when they updated it, while others said that was not their experience. Since the new owners warned of a "cascading systems failure," it makes sense that it would be hard to predict exactly which issues each app user will face.

TikTok's support section explains what users can do if they're experiencing app problems under normal circumstances. It's unclear whether this will help with the current issue, though.

Here's what TikTok suggests:

• Update your app to the latest version.
• Restart the app and your device.
• Check your internet connection.
• Clear your app cache/storage.
• Take note that some new features may only be available for a small number of users before they roll out to the entire app.