TikTok and privacy have always been strange bedfellows.
A pop up on the app caused concern in most people and others probably agreed to the new pop-up without blinking. When U.S. users opened the app, the scroll was blocked until they accepted new terms tied to TikTok’s transition into American majority ownership. On paper, this is about compliance and survival. In practice, it quietly reshapes what the platform can see, store, and sell about the people who fuel it.
The new entity, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, was created after the U.S. government pushed the platform to sever Chinese control. Among the investors is Oracle, a name that tends to make privacy watchers sit up straighter. TikTok declined to comment on specifics, which only adds to the intrigue. The real story lives inside the fine print.
First up is location. For years, TikTok insisted it did not collect GPS level location data from U.S. users. That era is over. Under the new policy, if a user enables location services, TikTok can now collect precise location data, not just approximate signals from IP addresses or SIM regions. That puts it in the same data neighborhood as apps like Instagramand X. The difference is TikTok is making this shift at a moment when trust is already fragile.
Then there is AI. TikTok has formally added AI interactions to its list of collectible data. Prompts, questions, uploaded files, generated responses, and even metadata about when and how those interactions happen can now be logged. In other words, if you are talking to TikTok’s AI tools, that conversation may be stored, analyzed, and tied back to your account.
Finally, advertising. TikTok’s ad ambitions are no longer confined to its own app. The updated policy expands how user data can be used across the wider internet through the TikTok Ad Network. Advertisers and publishers can share off platform behavior, while TikTok can return the favor by serving targeted ads beyond its own walls. Your TikTok data may now follow you a little farther than before.
Some say none of this means TikTok is suddenly evil, but the people I know are no longer on the app. The scroll ends here.
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