By: Emmett Gill
January 29, 2026
The social media platform TikTok has raised concerns around privacy and surveillance following the announced collection of new data after the platform transferred control of the user data of US citizens to a new joint venture. Following the closing of the year-long negotiations between representatives and Chinese company ByteDance, the TikTok USDS Joint Venture was recently established to comply with President Trump’s Executive Order back in Sep. 2025. The platform’s American presence will be spear-headed by newfound CEO Adam Passer and Chief Security Officer Will Farrell, who will be monitoring content released in the States. In a statement this past Thursday, Joint Venture stated the following:
“The majority American owned Joint Venture will operate under defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurances for U.S. users.”
The platform will collect approximate and precise location information of users, as well as sensitive demographic information. According to TikTok’s new privacy policy for Jan. 2026, this includes race, ethnicity, national origin, religious beliefs, mental or physical health disorders, identity regarding sex and gender, immigration status, and any financial information. These changes to the policy, combined with the new ownership, have led users and content creators alike to worry about the future of the platform.
The current experiences on the platform embody these exact worries. Numerous users have reported that they cannot see new content, or upload any new content after the update. The ownership of the American-based TikTok is also shared with Oracle, a multinational tech company known for managing and storing data with notoriety for recent security breaches. Back in Nov. of last year, for example, the corporation’s e-database was hacked, leading to sensitive data being leaked from corporations such as Canon and Mazda1. With these issues put together, users may have to consider leaving TikTok entirely to find a more user-friendly social media platform.
