U.S. TikTok users are uninstalling the app in record numbers following the announcement of a new joint venture for its American operations. Deletions have rocketed by nearly 150% over the past five days compared to the previous three months, Sensor Tower data shared with CNBC reveals.
The surge follows Thursday’s news of TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, which will run the video platform in the United States under local leadership. Adam Presser, formerly TikTok’s head of operations, takes the helm as chief executive.
Social media erupted with scepticism after users faced prompts to accept an updated privacy policy. Posts flagged clauses on collecting sensitive data like “your racial or ethnic origin” and “sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status, or financial information.” This wording matches an archived policy from August 2024.
Creator Dre Ronayne, with nearly 400,000 followers, quit on Sunday. “If I can delete my biggest platform because their terms of agreement and censorship have gotten out of control, so can you!” she posted on Threads.
Influencer Nadya Okamoto, who has over 4 million followers, reported upload failures lasting 24 hours. “That’s why there is so much paranoia, because we’re all kind of looking at this platform and we just don’t know what’s happening,” she told CNBC.
“Online there’s a lot of conversation about—is this all coincidence or censorship, and what does this look like? For everything to be happening at once, it is very scary,” she added.
The joint venture’s X account blamed outages on a U.S. data centre power cut. “We’re working with our data centre partner to stabilise our service. We’re sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon,” it stated.
Active U.S. user levels remain stable week-on-week, but rivals are thriving. UpScrolled downloads leapt over tenfold, Skylight Social surged 919%, and Rednote climbed 53%.