This week, TikTok creators have been sounding an alarm, saying views and engagement have plunged in the wake of a deal that brings control of TikTok to the U.S.
Creators and users have complained about the fact that videos are getting much less engagement and views. There is some speculation that suppression has been tied to creators who are speaking out politically, specifically if they criticize the Trump administration or ICE's deployment in Minnesota.
TikTok has denied those allegations, saying glitches are due to a recent major power outage linked to one of their U.S. Data center partners over the weekend.
One market analyst team that that studies digital activity told Scripps News that more users have been uninstalling TikTok. That rate increased 130% compared to more typical months.
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The agreement reached last week restructures TikTok’s U.S. business into a new joint venture, majority owned by a group of Trump-backed investors, including American tech giant Oracle, private equity fund Silver Lake, and the United Arab Emirates firm MGX. It limits the ownership stake of its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, and adding new safeguards around data and governance.
The new ownership quickly issued updates to its terms of service.
Some users expressed concern that the new terms meant TikTok would gather information on gender identity, racial background, medical history, sexual orientation or immigration status.
Scripps News' review of changes to TikTok's terms of service shows users had to accept most of those terms as early as July of 2024.
Recent changes, however, include new language that allows more tracking of geolocation data. TikTok has said that tracking can be disabled.
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Experts told Scripps News TikTok's terms are similar to those of many similar social platforms.
"As far as I can tell, [TikTok's new terms of service] are totally aligned with what we see. Another social media platforms," said Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute. "But I do think it raises the whole reason why we need to have trust in what we're using, because once there's kind of an insinuation of doubt about ownership and conflicts of interest, those kinds of questions, then I think people will put two and two together and get three and attribute whatever changes they see to some sort of political ideology."
"I think we are in a very charged moment right now. So this may be a lesson to apparently check in and read our terms of service agreements with the various apps or companies that we contract with," Kreps said.
