Tech News Roundup: TikTok Restored, AI Layoff Concerns, Tether's Media Push, and More
A flurry of tech news emerged this week, ranging from social media outages to artificial intelligence concerns and regulatory shifts in the cryptocurrency space.
TikTok announced Sunday that its services were restored after an outage last week that impacted user experience. The company, which has over 220 million users in the U.S., attributed the disruption to a snowstorm that caused a power outage at an Oracle-operated data center responsible for TikTok operations. "We have successfully restored TikTok back to normal after a significant outage caused by winter weather took down a primary U.S. data center site operated by Oracle," the company stated. The outage affected core features, including content posting, discovery, and the real-time display of video likes. The winter storm led to network and storage issues at the site and impacted tens of thousands of servers that help keep TikTok running in the U.S.
Meanwhile, the trend of companies citing artificial intelligence as a reason for layoffs is facing increased scrutiny. A New York Times article highlighted the phenomenon of "AI-washing," where companies use AI as an excuse to cover other problems, such as over-hiring during the pandemic. According to TechCrunch, AI was the stated reason for more than 50,000 layoffs in 2025, with Amazon and Pinterest among the tech companies who blamed the technology for recent cuts. However, a Forrester report published in January argued that "Many companies announcing A.I.-related layoffs do not have mature, vetted A.I. applications ready to fill those roles," highlighting a trend of A.I.
In the cryptocurrency world, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino launched a media blitz this week, appearing in Fortune, Bloomberg, Reuters, and TechCrunch. The timing coincides with Tether's launch of USAT, a U.S.-regulated stablecoin issued through Anchorage Digital Bank. This marks Tether's first product designed to comply with new federal rules and compete directly with Circle's USDC. Fidelity Investments also launched a competing stablecoin on Wednesday, joining JPMorgan Chase and PayPal in a broadening race. For years, Ardoino avoided the United States, watching from offshore as regulators circled.
In other news, Amazon's acquisition of the "Melania" documentary appears to be exceeding box office expectations. The documentary about First Lady Melania Trump is estimated to make $7.04 million on its opening weekend, coming in third overall behind "Send Help" (20 million) and "Iron Lung" (17.8 million). Amazon paid $40 million to acquire "Melania" and is reportedly spending $35 million to promote it. Despite outperforming pre-release estimates predicting a $3 to $5 million opening weekend, it's unlikely to make a profit in theaters.
Finally, Indonesia has conditionally lifted its ban on xAI's chatbot Grok. The Southeast Asian country had banned Grok after it was used to create a flood of nonconsensual, sexualized imagery on X, including images of real women and minors. In late December and January, Grok was used to create at least 1.8 million sexualized images of women, according to analyses by The New York Times and the Center for Countering Digital Hate. In a statement, Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs said that it was lifting the ban after X sent a letter outlining concrete steps for service improvements and the prevention of misuse. Alexander Sabar, the ministry's director general of digital space monitoring, confirmed the decision. Malaysia and the Philippines had previously lifted their bans on Grok.
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