January 27, 2026 TikTok is seeing a sharp spike in U.S. users deleting the app just days after the company unveiled a new ownership structure meant to keep the platform operating in the country. According to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, the daily average of TikTok uninstalls in the U.S. has jumped nearly 150 per cent over the past five days compared with the app’s average over the previous three months.
The surge followed TikTok’s announcement last Thursday that its U.S. operations would move into a newly formed joint venture under American leadership. According to the company, the move was designed to address longstanding regulatory pressure.
Adam Presser, formerly the company’s head of operations, was named the chief executive of the U.S. venture. But the announcement coincided with an in-app prompt asking users to agree to an updated privacy policy.
Much of the backlash focused on language in the policy describing the types of data TikTok may collect, including sensitive information such as “your racial or ethnic origin” and “sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status, or financial information.” Posts warning others to delete the app spread rapidly, with some users framing the changes as evidence that TikTok’s data practices were expanding.
In reality, the privacy policy appears unchanged. An archived version of TikTok’s privacy policy from August 2024 contains the same provisions. However, that distinction has done little to calm some users. Dre Ronayne, a creator with nearly 400,000 followers, announced on Threads that she deleted her TikTok account over the weekend. “If I can delete my biggest platform because their terms of agreement and censorship have gotten out of control, so can you!” she wrote.
Some say the confusion has been compounded by technical problems. Several creators reported outages and failed uploads in the days following the joint venture announcement. Nadya Okamoto, who has more than 4 million TikTok followers, told CNBC that creators have received little guidance about what the ownership change means for them.
An account associated with the TikTok joint venture acknowledged service disruptions on Monday, attributing the issues to a power outage at a U.S. data center. “We’re working with our data center partner to stabilize our service. We’re sorry for this disruption and hope to resolve it soon,” the account said.
Despite the spike in deletions, TikTok’s overall grip on U.S. users appears intact for now. Sensor Tower data shows that active usage levels in the U.S. have remained relatively flat compared with the prior week, suggesting that while some users are leaving, most are staying put.
Rival platforms, however, are benefiting from the issue. Sensor Tower said U.S. downloads of UpScrolled increased more than tenfold week over week, while Skylight Social rose 919 per cent and Chinese-owned Rednote climbed 53 per cent.
