TikTok creators have been sounding an alarm this week, saying views and engagement have plunged in the wake of a deal that brings control of TikTok to the U.S., and raising concerns about the app's updated terms of service.
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 denies the glitches have any political ties, instead blaming a "major infrastructural issue, triggered by a power outage" at one of the company’s U.S data center partners.
The company said the ongoing technical issues have caused "multiple bugs, slower load times, or timed-out requests" that have impacted all users in the U.S.
"I think that given that 200 million Americans experienced a huge snowstorm over the weekend that was putting a huge amount of demand on the power grid, it's a very plausible explanation." Sarah Kreps, Director of the Tech Policy Institute, told Scripps News." What I think will be important is pattern matching over time. So this happened on Monday after a very politically charged weekend. Does it happen again? And does that timing then start to look like a pattern of, wow, every time there's something really politically salient that happens, we see this glitch with TikTok content?"
Market intelligence firm Sensor Tower found that daily average TikTok app uninstalls increased 150% in the last week compared to the previous 90 days.
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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 adds new safeguards around data and governance.
The new ownership quickly issued updates to its terms of service.
Some users expressed concern when they saw the terms and privacy policy stated TikTok could gather information on gender identity, racial background, medical history, sexual orientation or immigration status. But a Scripps News review of past versions of TikTok’s terms of service and privacy agreements found that language was updated as early as July 2024.
Recent changes, however, include new language that allows more tracking of geolocation data. TikTok has said that tracking can be disabled through settings on individual devices.
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Experts told Scripps News that 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 on other 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 politically-motivated ideology, and I think we are in a very charged moment right now."
