TikTok users are reporting that all their video views and like counts have reset to zero

• TikTok users reported Thursday afternoon video views and like counts had suddenly reset to zero on the app.
• Within minutes, users took to social media to panic and try to figure out what was going on.
• TikTok wrote on Twitter it's aware of the issue, and "working quickly to fix things." Users have started to report seeing the affected numbers reappear on TikTok.

Video views and like counts on TikTok briefly disappeared from the app Thursday, causing millions of its fervent users to panic.

TikTok users on Thursday afternoon noticed the numbers within the app indicating likes and views on videos had all reset to zero. Some users also reported their "For You" feeds going dark or appearing to reset, meaning that users were no longer shown videos recommended to them by TikTok's famed algorithm.

Down Detector, a website tracking internet outages, showed nearly 20,000 reports from users experiencing issues with the app.

TikTok has since acknowledged in a statement on Twitter it's aware of the reported issues, and said it's "working to quickly fix things." Some users are starting to report their view and like counts have reappeared, and that the app is again working normally for them.

As reports of TikTok's outage surfaced, people took to Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms in droves to panic and hypothesize about the situation. Within minutes of the first reports coming in, TikTok became the No. 1 trend on Twitter in the US.

Discussion around TikTok's issues are also taking place on TikTok itself. Some users noticed swarms of accounts they follow going live within minutes of each other to share their confusion in real-time.

Some users leveled the theory that TikTok's issues indicated the app had been banned in the US, something President Donald Trump said this week he was considering as an option to punish China regarding the coronavirus pandemic. Since March, Trump has repeatedly referred to coronavirus as the "Chinese virus" and asserted China was "the source" of the pandemic.

TikTok has grown to become a social media powerhouse within the last couple of years, particularly among Generation Z teens. Since it was launched globally in 2017 — and then a year later in the U.S. — TikTok has generated more than two billion downloads worldwide. The app saw its most popular quarter ever in the first three months of 2020, as millions went into lockdown to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

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