I, like many Americans, have been a TikTok user for many years, having carefully cultivated my algorithm and For You Page to fit my own niche interests. As a young user of the platform, I never worried about what information they, as well as other social media platforms, were collecting from me because I didn’t believe that I had any information they would use. I just wanted to have a good time sending funny videos to my friends.

But as my interests broadened, my feed naturally changed to include more politics, activism and news 一 both mainstream and independent 一 allowing me to become more informed on issues and policies that big corporations and the government are not fully open about.

The details behind the recent acquisition of the app by the United States and Oracle’s Larry Ellison may escape those who blindly agree to updates in the app’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

On Jan. 22, 2025, the deal to acquire TikTok (or, at least its U.S. app 一 international servers will remain under ByteDance) was finalized, leading to the rollout of new terms of service and privacy policy and notification of new ownership.

In the following days, users were notified of the new changes and updates when they opened the app, prompting them to agree before continuing to their feed or get off the app. 

There is no option for someone to disagree and continue to use the app.

Included in these updated terms of service (ToS) and policy is your consent as a user to allow the app’s owners (in this case, Larry Ellison) to use device geolocation 一 the act of using GPS and cellular networks to obtain the geographic location of devices such as laptops, mobile phones, and smart watches 一 to gather more of your personal information aside from the personal information they will already be gathering.

On the other side, the privacy policy mentions what sensitive and personal information they will be collecting through your messages in the app, along with behavioral patterns. The policy states that the information to be collected will be the following: “information you disclose in survey responses or in your user content about your racial or ethnic origin, national origin, religious beliefs, mental or physical health diagnosis, sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status, or financial information.”

One’s driver’s license information is also included within these parameters.

These changes have been a major tipping point for U.S. users over the days following the acquisition, with many taking to Reddit to voice their concerns and what apps they’re moving to after deleting their TikTok accounts.

One Reddit user (@02kaj2019) commented, “(In the US) Do we no longer have the ability to select our privacy choices? In TikTok there was an opt in to sharing your data as of yesterday in the new version of the app. I hate that we’re being chased away from app to app because of these f***s.”

In another post, a user commented, “Back to Youtube and Bluesky. I was able to delete without clicking the pop-up (though I heard using the app without agreeing is the same thing as agreeing to the new terms 🤷🏾‍♀️). But, yeah…those new terms are insane.” 

For some users, now the process of deleting their accounts is a hassle after the update, with some being told that their email does not match, the verification process failed or they never received an SMS code needed to continue the account deletion process.

Some are even going so far as to go on airplane mode to prevent the popup from immediately coming up so that they can get into their accounts and delete them without having to agree with the ToS.

Netizens and myself alike have found this to be one of the more invasive and blatant means of surveillance by the State in recent years, and can be seen as all the more insidious as the nation is facing more and more unchecked, federal militant intervention with ongoing I.C.E. operations 一 many of which are being captured on film and uploaded for everyone to see on TikTok, among other apps, and subsequently censored or taken down by the app for supposedly violating community guidelines.

Whether fortunate or not, there is no need for another Edward Snowden to blow the whistle that government surveillance of the American public is happening on an astronomical scale, because it’s being flaunted in our faces at every turn.

During times of civil unrest, it is paramount for the people to have means of receiving unadulterated proof and footage of what is happening, and TikTok was our means. So, where do we all go now? Instagram is owned by Meta, X is owned by Elon Musk.

Yes, there’s Youtube and Bluesky, but with the current social media climate, it’s only a matter of time before Google begins censoring more critical content on the streaming platform, and not many people even know what Bluesky is. Even more people may be unwilling to delete their lives off of platforms like Instagram and X in order to move to a different one.

But perhaps one major shift from platforms may be a tipping point in favor of the People in a time when the government is clearly not.