TikTok recovers from dip in usage that benefited rival apps following US ownership change

TikTok has largely recovered from a slight dip in active users in the days following its change of ownership, when a group of American investors took control of the video app’s operations in the United States. The decline, though brief, benefited competing video apps like UpScrolled and Skylight Social, which saw rapid user adoption as others sought alternatives to TikTok.

According to estimates from digital market intelligence firm Similarweb, TikTok saw usage enter the range of 86-88 million daily active users in the US shortly after the change in ownership. That compares to a typical average of 92 million daily active users.

The app has returned to more than 90 million daily active users, indicating that many who left TikTok have returned.

As TikTok saw a slight dip in usage, other video sharing apps UpScroll and Skylight Social began to grow rapidly. Although a fraction of the size of TikTok, UpScrolled exceeded 138,500 daily active users at its peak on January 28; now it has dropped back to 68,000.

Meanwhile, Skylight Social reached 81,200 daily active users, according to Similarweb estimates and has since dropped to 56,300 daily active users. In total, Skylight Social saw user registrations increase to 380,000 in late January, the company told TechCrunch.

The decline in TikTok usage, which prompted some to try new apps, was not driven by the change in ownership directly, but rather by how users feared it would affect their TikTok experience. There has been growing concern over TikTok’s revised privacy policy, which has given the app permission to track users’ precise GPS location. (This addition could be related to TikTok’s testing of the “nearby” feed to show users videos from local creators, but it was added to the policy in accordance with the change of ownership, leading to pushback from users with privacy concerns.)

When re-reading the privacy policy, some users also found disturbing language, such as that TikTok said it may collect users’ “arrival status” among personal data. However, this turned out to be a reference that was put in place because of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which requires businesses to notify consumers if they are collecting certain sensitive data. TikTok does that – in the sense that whatever someone puts on the platform in their video content technically becomes part of the platform, so it needs to be disclosed.

In addition, TikTok unfortunately happened, the end of the data center unfortunately, which caused the application to not work properly, sometimes it breaks the search, likes, and comments, caused video problems, interfered with the algorithm, and caused problems with the in-app chat. Users believe these issues mean TikTok is now censoring their content, sending them scrambling for alternatives.

The company announced Sunday evening that a data center outage has been resolved, resulting from a winter storm-driven power outage.

As users made peace with the new terms and conditions and outage-driven issues were resolved, users returned to the platform, Similarweb data shows. But there is still hope for newcomers, as the company notes that the use of TikTok has been declining slightly in the last half of 2025, when the use has increased significantly to 100 million active users from July to October 2025, compared to the 90 million+ seen now.