TikTok has experienced several major crashes and outages over the past year, frustrating millions of users who rely on the popular social media app. In March 2022, TikTok began experiencing widespread technical issues that prevented videos from loading and disrupted key features like commenting and posting
According to reports, the crashes started on March 8, 2022 and continued intermittently over the next few days. Many users reported problems loading their ‘For You’ feed, posting new videos, and using filters or effects. The crashes impacted TikTok on both iOS and Android platforms.
These recent crashes mark the latest in a string of technical malfunctions on TikTok that left users unable to access the app fully and sparked complaints across social media. Examining the potential causes behind TikTok’s crashes can shed light on the app’s infrastructure and rapid growth.
Technical Issues
One major reason why TikTok has been crashing frequently is due to technical issues with the app and servers. As TikTok’s popularity exploded in 2020, the app has struggled to keep up with the massive influx of new users and activity [1]. Server overload is a common problem, where the servers reach maximum capacity which causes delays, lagging, and outages [2]. TikTok’s infrastructure has not scaled quickly enough to handle the rapid growth.
Bugs and glitches within the TikTok app are another technical reason for frequent crashing. Issues with the coding and optimization of the app can cause it to crash or freeze. Updates to the app sometimes introduce new bugs as well. Users have reported increased crashing when using certain features like filters, editing, and uploading [3]. Overall, TikTok needs to improve the stability and performance of its app across platforms.
Increased Traffic
The rapid growth in TikTok’s popularity is a major factor contributing to its technical issues. According to TikTok Statistics, TikTok’s global monthly active users grew over 1000% between 2018 and 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a massive spike in usage, as people spent more time online during lockdowns. In Q1 2020 alone, TikTok was downloaded over 315 million times globally, the highest quarterly number on record.
This meteoric rise placed strain on TikTok’s systems. While established social media giants like Facebook were built to handle billions of users from the start, TikTok has had to play catch-up. From server capacity to content moderation, TikTok has struggled to scale up operations fast enough to match user growth. With over 1 billion monthly active users globally, TikTok sees usage rates that can overwhelm its infrastructure during peak times, causing outages and technical problems.
New Features
TikTok has been rolling out new features at a rapid pace, which has put a strain on its systems. According to TikTok’s Creator Portal (https://www.tiktok.com/creators/creator-portal/en-us/category/product-feature-updates/), some of the new features launched recently include Text-to-Speech, Avatars, and interactive polls. The introduction of these new features, especially bandwidth-intensive ones like TikTok Live, have increased load on TikTok’s servers.
TikTok Live allows creators to broadcast live video to their followers. With millions of users going live at once, this adds significant strain. TikTok has also launched new augmented reality effects, filters, stickers, and more. While these new features appeal to users, they require major engineering efforts on TikTok’s end to handle the additional computational load.
Security Concerns
TikTok has faced growing concerns over potential security issues that could expose user data or allow foreign influence. According to TikTok: Recent Data Privacy and National Security Concerns, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is subject to data security laws in China that require sharing data with the government upon request. There are fears that weaknesses in TikTok’s code or infrastructure could potentially allow unauthorized access to user data.
Some of the major security risks with TikTok stem from its ownership by a Chinese company. The Chinese government has exhibited a pattern of exploiting software vulnerabilities for surveillance, and there are concerns they could do the same with TikTok. As reported by Kaspersky, security researchers have found vulnerabilities that would allow TikTok accounts to be taken over and user data extracted. So far these have been patched, but it demonstrates the potential for weaknesses to be exploited if not addressed.
Overall, the core security concern is that TikTok’s systems could be leveraged to gather data on users or manipulate content. Increased oversight and auditing of its security practices may be necessary to alleviate these fears of potential backdoors for the Chinese government.
Competition with Rivals
TikTok often sees spikes in usage when competing platforms like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts experience technical issues or crashes. According to Social Insider, TikTok has an average watch rate of 9.06% compared to 13.08% for Instagram Reels. This indicates that Reels tends to keep viewers engaged for longer sessions. However, when Reels suffers downtime, many users migrate to TikTok as an alternative. The reverse is also true, with TikTok users moving to other platforms during outages.
YouTube Shorts in particular has been gaining significant traction and market share, now accounting for over 50 billion daily views. But Shorts relies on YouTube’s infrastructure, which has experienced its own stability problems recently. Each time YouTube falters, TikTok reaps the benefits of having disgruntled Shorts creators and fans seeking temporary refuge.
As the competition between short-form video platforms continues to heat up, instability on any one can lead to opportunistic growth for others. TikTok stands ready to onboard new users whenever its rivals stumble.
Government Restrictions
Some governments have enacted bans or limitations on TikTok due to concerns over national security, data privacy, and censorship. One of the most significant bans was enacted in India in June 2020, when the government permanently banned TikTok along with 58 other Chinese-owned apps amid escalating tensions between the two countries (source). India had been TikTok’s largest overseas market, with over 200 million users at the time of the ban.
Other countries that have imposed complete bans on TikTok include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Tanzania. Partial restrictions or temporary bans have been implemented in countries like Australia, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore. For example, the U.S. Navy banned TikTok from government-issued mobile devices in 2019 over cybersecurity concerns about potential data leaks. The Indonesian government temporarily blocked TikTok in 2018 due to concerns about illegal content.
Government scrutiny over TikTok’s data collection practices and possible ties to the Chinese government persist around the world. However, TikTok claims it stores international user data outside of China and that it operates independently from its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance. The app remains immensely popular globally, though its growth in some markets has been impacted by government restrictions.
Preparedness Issues
One of the biggest reasons for TikTok’s technical issues is that the platform was not prepared for the massive growth it experienced. In 2018, TikTok had about 104 million monthly active users globally. By late 2020, that number skyrocketed to over 1 billion monthly active users as the app surged in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
TikTok’s backend infrastructure struggled to keep up with this exponential increase in users and activity. As per a TikTok engineering blog post, the teams had to continually expand capacity and optimize systems to handle the traffic. However, there were still periodic outages and crashes as the infrastructure reached its limits.
Experts note that the app was originally designed for a much smaller scale. Adjusting the architecture and stacks to sustain billions of users is an ongoing challenge. Issues like server overload, network congestion, and bottlenecks in data pipelines have become more common.
As TikTok races to improve its infrastructure, users continue to face frustration from regular technical problems. However, the company is investing heavily in its engineering teams to build more robust and redundant systems. The challenge is developing infrastructure not just for today’s needs but also future growth, as TikTok cements its position as one of the world’s leading social apps.
Impact on Users
When TikTok crashes frequently, it can cause great annoyance and frustration for users. Many users have complained about the app crashing right when they were about to finish editing or posting a video, causing them to lose their unsaved work and progress (source). This results in wasted time and effort, and some users have threatened to stop using TikTok altogether if the crashing persists.
The crashes also lead to lost views and engagement for creators. If TikTok goes down for even a short period of time, creators miss out on the views and likes their videos would normally receive during peak hours. The algorithm also penalizes videos that underperform at launch, so a crash right after posting can hurt a video’s overall performance. Creators relying on TikTok for income or business are especially frustrated by these losses.
Overall, the constant crashing problems have led to exasperation and complaints from the TikTok community. Users feel like they cannot depend on the app functioning properly, which takes away some of the fun and appeal. TikTok will need to substantially improve stability and performance in order to restore user trust and satisfaction.
Conclusion
As we’ve covered, there are many factors that have contributed to TikTok’s recent outages and crashes. Increased traffic and new features have strained the app’s infrastructure, while competition with rivals like Instagram and government restrictions have added external pressures. But the root causes likely lie in some combination of technical and preparedness issues within TikTok itself. While inconvenient for users, these growing pains are natural for any rapidly expanding platform.
Looking ahead, TikTok will need to continue expanding its capacity, troubleshooting issues quickly, and balancing growth with stability. Success will depend on learning from these incidents, strengthening infrastructure, collaborating with regulators, and keeping users in mind. If done right, TikTok can grow its community and evolve its platform while minimizing disruptions. Only time will tell, but the stakes are high to keep this short-form video giant up and running smoothly.
