Back in Jan. 2025, the popular social media app TikTok which was originally meant to be banned in the United States, supposedly because of an argument over China getting vital access to American data. The deal was that Bytedance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, would have to either remove the app or hand over the ownership to the U.S.. President Donald Trump extended the deadline of this deal for a year. According to Fox Business, Trump vows that the app would be protected saying he wants to see the app finalize.

On Jan. 22, 2026, Bytedance established a separate American entity to run most of the app’s operations. The app is now owned by U.S. investors like Oracle, a U.S. tech giant, Silver Lake, a U.S. investment firm, and MGX, an Emirati AI investment company. Each of these investor groups holds a 15% stake. According to TechCrunch, ByteDance only has a 19.9% share of the app while about 80% is owned by non-Chinese investors.

The new entity, known as “TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC,” licenses TikTok’s algorithm, algorithm security, content moderation, data protection, and the software controls. 

Since the new update, many users have reported issues that have appeared. Some issues involve multiple videos resurfacing, videos not loading, and server outages. On Jan. 25, over 35,000 users reported issues on the app, according to Downdetector. 

As of Jan. 22, 2026, users were introduced to the app’s new terms and conditions. Some of the updated terms include the age restriction of users under 13, as well as expanding the app’s ability to target advertising by tracking the location of users.

Tiktok is one of the most popular social media apps used today. Now that there are new American operations controlling the app, it’s bound to have new changes and updates in the future.