A TikTok Inc. sign in front of a building on Tuesday, January 27, 2026 in Culver City, California.
Kayla Bartkowski | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
TikTok’s U.S. joint venture appears to have weathered a tumultuous rollout with minimal changes in user numbers, as early stories of a mass exodus of users sparked by outages and censorship concerns now appear to be exaggerated, according to new numbers.
Despite a spike in removals following TikTok’s announcement of its U.S. joint venture on Jan. 23, TikTok’s average daily active users in the U.S. remain at about 95% of its user count compared to the week of Jan. 19-25, according to research data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
The joint venture, officially known as the TikTok USDS Joint Venture, was created pursuant to an executive order by US President Donald Trump directing the sale of TikTok in the US from its Chinese parent company ByteDance.
After the agreement, ByteDance will retain a 19.9% stake in TikTok’s U.S. business. oracleSilver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX will each own a 15% stake, with the remaining shares distributed among several other companies.
Following this announcement, users were quick to voice their displeasure with TikTok’s new ownership.
The deal has drawn scrutiny, with celebrities like Sen. Bernie Sanders (R-Vermont) raising concerns about nepotism over the involvement of Oracle co-founder and chief technology officer Larry Ellison.
The announcement of a joint venture in which Ellison’s Oracle would “retrain, test, and update its content recommendation algorithms based on U.S. user data” fueled speculation online that TikTok would begin mining user data or promoting content that supports President Trump’s policy positions.
Those concerns spiked on January 25, when users claimed TikTok was suppressing content critical of controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement practices and censoring buzzwords like “Epstein” on the platform.
CNBC confirmed last month that messages containing the word “Epstein” triggered the error message, but could not independently verify the broader claims about political censorship.
Asked about the issue in January, a spokesperson for the TikTok joint venture told CNBC that the platform does not prohibit sharing the name “Epstein” in messages and is investigating why some users are experiencing this issue.
CNBC reached out to the White House and TikTok for comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Engagement metrics remain unchanged
TikTok blamed last month’s disruption on a power outage, but Jim Johnston, a partner at law firm Davis+Gilbert LLP, said the glitch “definitely impacted how and what content was served, even if it wasn’t intentional or motivated.”
But despite various user pledges to boycott the platform over apparent political repression, engagement metrics among US users suggest there is little sign of a mass exodus.
According to Sensor Tower data, the average daily amount of time American users spend on the platform dropped to an average of 77 minutes during the week the outage was reported, before rebounding to around 80 minutes.
Additionally, while the number of removals spiked after the disruption was reported, they declined the following week, suggesting a temporary spike rather than an ongoing boycott of the app.
Abraham Youssef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower, told CNBC that on January 25, the number of uninstalls and subsequent same-day reinstalls jumped more than 70% from the previous day. “The observed short-term increase in uninstalls is likely due to attempts to troubleshoot the app,” he told CNBC.
Youssef acknowledged that data suggests a “slight impact on overall usage” in the weeks since the joint venture was announced, but there are no clear signs of a structural shift in user trends, as many sites touted as TikTok alternatives have also struggled to maintain interest.
New installs of UpScrolled, a social media platform that offers an algorithm that bypasses automated systems to filter some users’ content known as shadowbanning, jumped about 770% from the previous week, with more than 955,000 new downloads in the U.S. during the week from January 26 to February 1, according to Sensor Tower.
However, the following week, new UpScrolld downloads plummeted by about 80%, with only about 191,000 new users. In comparison, TikTok recorded 870,000 downloads in the week from January 26th to February 1st, and around 800,000 downloads the following week.
Similarly, new downloads for other alternative platforms such as Skylight Social and Red Note were down 96% and 33% week over week, respectively, starting the week of January 26th.
Dilute evidence of mass exodus
More fundamentally, Sensor Tower’s user data seems to suggest that, beyond anecdotal claims, users are barely perceiving any tangible changes in TikTok’s U.S. operations, or at least not enough to meaningfully change user sentiment.
“The idea of a mass exodus from TikTok now seems far-fetched,” Forrester principal analyst Kelsey Chickering told CNBC. “As a side note, most users say the app feels about the same. The algorithm hasn’t changed significantly and the experience is still strong.”
While some American users may have noticed changes in the behavior of the TikTok algorithm, Johnston said that “some changes to content suggestions will inevitably occur simply due to data set changes,” Johnston said, referring to the joint venture’s announcement to retrain the algorithm based on U.S. data.
But while analysts have been unable to find evidence that TikTok’s new American owners designed the platform to their advantage, this is not a foregone conclusion.
Johnston said there are at least three notable changes to TikTok’s new terms of service, including the platform’s ability to collect precise location data from compatible devices, the collection of data about interactions with artificial intelligence tools on the app, and explicit integration with ad networks.
Johnston said that while there is no hard evidence that this happens, it is technically possible to tweak TikTok’s algorithm to make certain types of content more or less influential in its recommendations.
Chickering added that under new ownership, TikTok now has more control over what appears in its U.S. feed, which Chickering says is both an opportunity and a risk for TikTok.
“If moderation starts to feel politically skewed, or if misinformation isn’t properly addressed, platforms could face a backlash from users and advertisers alike,” Chickering said. “We’ve seen this play out before. Twitter’s move to X was the latest reminder of how quickly trust can erode.”
But for now, the complaints among TikTok’s U.S. users that marred the first few weeks under new ownership appear to have largely subsided.
As Chickering points out, “We’ve seen time and time again that if a product works, users tend to stick with it, regardless of who owns it.”
—CNBC’s Dylan Butts contributed to this report.
