After a shaky start, TikTok’s U.S. joint venture lands on its feet
TikTok Inc. in front of the building on Tuesday, January 27, 2026 in Culver City, CA. sign.
Kayla Bartkowski | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
TikTok’s US joint venture appears to have weathered a turbulent launch early with minimal change in user numbers narratives Mass user exodus driven by service outages and censorship concerns now appears exaggerated, according to new figures.
Survey data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower shows that despite the increase following deletions announcement According to data from TikTok’s US joint venture on January 23, the average number of TikTok’s daily active users in the US remains around 95% of the number of users compared to the week of January 19-25.
The joint venture, officially the TikTok USDS Joint Venture, was established in accordance with the instructions of US President Donald Trump. executive order In the US, it forces TikTok to divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
While ByteDance retained a 19.9% stake in TikTok’s US operations following the agreement. SeerSilver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX each hold 15%, while the remaining shares are split among several other firms.
Following the announcement, users immediately expressed their displeasure with TikTok’s new ownership.
The deal has come under scrutiny, with prominent figures such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) voicing concerns about nepotism regarding the involvement of Oracle co-founder and Chief Technical Officer Larry Ellison.
After the joint venture announced that Ellison’s Oracle would “retrain, test and update its content recommendation algorithm on US user data,” online speculation emerged that TikTok would begin mining user data or promoting content that supports Trump’s policy positions.
Such concerns escalated on January 25, when users claimed TikTok was suppressing content critical of controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and censoring buzzwords like ‘Epstein’ on the platform.
Last month, CNBC confirmed that messages containing the word “Epstein” triggered an error message, but could not independently verify broader allegations of political censorship.
When asked about the issues, a spokesperson for the TikTok joint venture told CNBC in January that the platform does not prohibit sharing the name ‘Epstein’ in messages and is investigating why some users are experiencing this issue, among others.
CNBC reached out to the White House and TikTok for comment but did not receive a response via broadcast.
Engagement metrics unchanged
Although TikTok attributed last month’s outages to power outages, the disruptions are “undoubtedly having an impact”[ed] How and what content is presented, even without any intent or motive, according to Jim Johnston, partner at law firm Davis+Gilbert LLP.
But despite pledges from various users to boycott the platform due to apparent political pressure, engagement metrics among U.S. users show little sign of a mass exodus.
The average daily time spent by American users on the platform fell to an average of 77 minutes during the week of reported outages, before returning to about 80 minutes, according to Sensor Tower data.
Additionally, while deletions increased rapidly following reported outages, they decreased the following week; This shows that the practice indicates a temporary increase rather than a permanent boycott.
“It is plausible that the short-term increase in observed removals was due to an attempt to troubleshoot the application,” Abraham Yousef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower, told CNBC. The number of same-day removals and subsequent reinstallations increased by more than 70% on January 25 compared to the previous day.
While Yousef acknowledged that data showed a “slight impact on overall usage” in the weeks after the Joint Venture was announced, there is no clear indication of a structural shift in user trends, as many sites touted as alternatives to TikTok have also struggled to maintain traction.
New installs of social media platform UpScrolled, according to Sensor Tower algorithm It is exempt from automated systems that filter content from some users, known as shadow banning – there were more than 955,000 new downloads from the US in the week of January 26 to February 1, up nearly 770% from the previous week.
But new UpScrolled downloads dropped sharply by nearly 80% the following week, bringing in only around 191,000 new users. In comparison, TikTok recorded 870,000 downloads in the week of January 26 to February 1, and nearly 800,000 downloads the following week.
Similarly, new downloads of other alternative platforms such as Skylight Social and Red Note were down 96% and 33% week-on-week, respectively, from the week of January 26.
Weak evidence of mass migration
More fundamentally, beyond anecdotal claims, Sensor Tower’s user data seems to suggest that users have largely been unable to detect concrete changes in TikTok’s American operations, or at least not enough to meaningfully shift user sentiment.
“The idea of a mass exodus from TikTok now seems far-fetched,” Kelsey Chickering, principal analyst at Forrester, told CNBC. “Anecdotally, most users say the app feels largely the same; the algorithm hasn’t changed in any meaningful way and the experience remains strong.”
While some American users may have detected changes in how TikTok’s algorithms operate, “it is inevitable that some changes in content recommendations will occur simply because of the changing data set,” according to Johnston, citing the Joint Venture’s announcement to retrain the algorithm on US data.
But while analysts have found no evidence that TikTok’s new American owners designed the platform to their advantage, it’s not a foregone conclusion.
According to Johnston, there are at least three notable changes to TikTok’s new terms of use, including the platform’s ability to collect precise location data from enabled devices, its collection of data on interactions with AI tools in the app, and its open integration with ad networks.
While there’s no conclusive evidence that this is occurring, it remains technically possible to tweak TikTok’s algorithm to increase or decrease the impact of certain types of content on recommendations, Johnston said.
Chickering adds that under new owners, TikTok has more control over what appears in American feeds, but that control is where TikTok’s opportunity and risk lies, Chickering adds.
“If moderation starts to feel politically biased or misinformation isn’t adequately addressed, the platform could face a backlash from both users and advertisers,” Chickering said. “We’ve seen this before: Twitter’s recent move to X is a reminder of how quickly trust can erode.”
But for now, the discontent of TikTok’s American users that marred its first few weeks under new ownership appears to have largely abated.
As Chickering puts it, “We have seen time and time again that if the product works, users tend to stick with it, regardless of who owns it.”
— CNBC’s Dylan Butts contributed to this report.
