TikTok 'major infrastructure issue' sparks censorship claims from Democrats Newsom, Murphy

TikTok insists tech issues caused widespread problems this week, but that didn’t stop Democratic leaders from politicizing the ordeal.

TikTok last week finalized a historic deal to launch a majority American-owned joint venture, a move aimed at averting a potential U.S. ban on the popular social media app. The deal marked a major milestone for TikTok, coming after years of legal and political battles that began in 2020, when President Donald Trump raised national security concerns about the Chinese-owned platform. 

But days after the deal was announced, a variety of TikTok users claimed the platform suppressed or censored content related to such controversial topics as Alex Pretti being killed by federal agents in Minnesota and Jeffrey Epstein. 

TikTok announced that a "major infrastructure issue triggered by a power outage at one of our U.S. data center partner sites" was responsible for the problems, but Trump critics quickly jumped to conclusions. 

TIKTOK AVOIDS US BAN BY FINALIZING HISTORIC TRUMP-BACKED AMERICAN MAJORITY OWNERSHIP DEAL

President Donald Trump raised national security concerns about Chinese-owned TikTok before a historic deal put American entities in control.  (Cheng Xin/Getty Images)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., took to social media to sound the alarm. 

"It’s time to investigate," Newsom wrote on Monday. "I am launching a review into whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring Trump-critical content."

Murphy said in a video posted to social media Wednesday it "appears that there was a widespread suppression" of content critical of Trump and it "might not be coincidental" that pro-Trump entities took control of TikTok's U.S. operations.

While many liberals used the #TikTokCensorship hashtag, others are peeved that the ordeal was politicized. 

"Sometimes an outage is just an outage. Governor Newsom and the others know the facts and know better," a source told Fox News Digital. 

Newsom's office confirmed the governor is launching a review. Murphy's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

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California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., took to social media to sound the alarm about TikTok. (Getty Images)

Under the new TikTok agreement, American entities hold an 80.1% stake in the new joint venture, with the original parent company ByteDance retaining 19.9%. Three companies, including cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX, serve as managing investors, each holding a 15% stake.  

Oracle, which was not directly named in TikTok’s statement about the "infrastructure issue," said the "weather-related power outage" occurred at one of its data centers. 

"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 quickly to resolve," Oracle said. 

Business Insider chief correspondent and tech guru Peter Kafka wrote that TikTok and Oracle’s explanation "seems pretty plausible" and noted that everything appeared to be "back to normal." 

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Under the new TikTok agreement, American entities hold an 80.1% stake in the new joint venture, with the original parent company ByteDance retaining 19.9%.  (Gabby Jones/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

"My TikTok was full of rage-inducing clips about Alex Pretti's death, including multiple ones where creators urged viewers to learn how to use guns to defend themselves from the government. And while I don't normally use TikTok's DM feature, or send messages about Jeffrey Epstein, I was able to do that without a problem," Kafka wrote. 

"All of which suggests that TikTok's answer — we had to unplug the machine and plug it back in, basically — sounds pretty plausible to me," he continued. "And much more plausible than, ‘The new US TikTok has immediately started censoring anti-Trump views.’"

When reached for comment, TikTok directed Fox News Digital to a page that provides updates on the issue. 

A spokeswoman for the app told The New York Times that it was "inaccurate to report that this is anything but the technical issues we’ve transparently confirmed."

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Fox News Digital’s Bonny Chu contributed to this report.