TikTok Users Report Videos Not Posting After the Company Changed Hands to U.S. Investors
Some TikTok users think videos that speak out against ICE are getting cut from the app.
Published Jan. 26 2026, 4:19 p.m. ET
In the early morning of Jan. 26, 2026, many TikTok users reported that they were having issues posting videos to their TikTok accounts. Some users said that their videos were getting stuck "under review," while others reported getting zero views or videos not posting at all.
Some users think their videos are being censored because they're speaking out against ICE, while others argue the glitch is due to TikTok's ownership change. Here's what we know about what's going on.
Why are TikTok videos not posting, or getting zero views?
The most concrete explanation for TikTok's video posting glitch is a confirmed outage at a U.S. data center. The inclement weather disrupting TikTok's U.S. server is the reason for the technical issues, according to the new investors' official X (formerly Twitter) account.
TikTok's Joint Venture U.S. account posted a message at 7:21 a.m. PST confirming the outage. "We're working with our data center partner to stabilize our service. We're sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon," they wrote.
Some TikTok users note that deleting and then reposting videos fixed the issue for them, while others say that their reposted videos still received zero views.
Some TikTok users think their videos about ICE are being censored.
TikTok users like Jen Hamilton pointed out that many of their videos are either "under review" or show zero views. "Is this happening to any other TikTok creators who speak up about [ICE]?" she asked. Jen pointed out that TikTok changed ownership to U.S.-based companies last week. She said that her videos "never" go under review, and it's now happened five times in the past week. In the comments, many social media users report similar stories.
Celebrities like Billie Eilish and Meg Stalter claim that TikTok is monitoring and censoring their posts when they speak out against ICE. Even Senator Chris Murphy claims that posts that are critical of ICE are being censored, per Forbes. Senator Scott Wiener called TikTok "state-controlled media" in a post to X.
Although there are many anecdotes from creators on social media that say their posts are being squashed because they're speaking up about ICE and the tensions between ICE and protesters in Minnesota, it's hard to confirm whether the posting issue is actually due to the content of TikTokers' videos. The app referred Forbes to their X post about the server being down when Forbes asked for a comment on the issue.
TikTok's ownership change also means changes within the app.
The TikTok algorithm will be licensed from ByteDance and then retrained on U.S. user data, according to The Economic Times. TikTok users in the U.S. also have to accept the app's new privacy policy by the decree of Trump's executive order.
U.S. user data will be collected and stored in Oracle's U.S. cloud environment, which concerns many users. After users accept the new terms and conditions, TikTok will have access to users' live location, and they'll be able to use user data to serve them ads outside of TikTok, per Distractify.