TikTok’s new US venture is in trouble – here are the 3 privacy-first apps people are flocking to instead

• US TikTok users are reportedly uninstalling the app at a far higher rate than usual
• This seems to mostly be down to concerns about the privacy policy
• Three lesser known apps are surging in popularity as a result

TikTok has had a troubled time recently in the US, with ByteDance (the original company behind it) having to sell a controlling share of the US version to an American-owned venture.

That deal has allowed it to continue operating in the US, albeit with a new algorithm. But it’s seemingly not the end of TikTok’s problems, as according to Sensor Tower – a market intelligence firm – in a comment to CNBC, the daily average of US users deleting TikTok has increased nearly 150% over the past five days relative to the last three months.

There are likely multiple reasons for this, but a lot of it appears to come down to the new privacy policy, which states that TikTok might collect data including “your racial or ethnic origin”, and your “sexual life or sexual orientation, status as transgender or nonbinary, citizenship or immigration status, or financial information.”

As CNBC notes, this language isn’t actually new, so it’s unclear whether people are only noticing it now or whether they’re more concerned by it now that this data will be in the hands of a US company.

But either way, users are understandably vocally opposed to this data being collected, with for example creator Dre Ronayne posting on Threads that they “just deleted TikTok with nearly 400k followers, good riddance”, and following it up with “if I can delete my biggest platform because their terms of agreement and censorship have gotten out of control, so can you!”

Troublesome tech and rising rivals

That privacy policy may not be the only issue though, as this new version of TikTok is also reportedly dealing with bugs and a lack of clarity on what the changes to the platform will mean for creators.

If you’re among those feeling disillusioned though, there are alternative apps you could turn to, and in fact three rivals have seen major gains as users seemingly leave TikTok in droves.

The biggest winner is UpScrolled, which according to Sensor Tower has seen a more than tenfold increase in US downloads this week, and with the makers posting on X that it's now the third most popular social media app in the US. Skylight Social meanwhile has risen by a similarly impressive 919%, and Rednote by 53%.

So these seem to be three of the main apps that ex-TikTok users are flocking to – though of course it’s likely that big names like Instagram are also benefitting.

Of those three lesser known apps, UpScrolled and Skylight Social in particular seem to have more agreeable privacy policies, of the kind that don’t mention capturing seemingly unnecessary private data. Rednote seems to collect more, but doesn’t appear to make mention of TikTok’s more troubling things like immigration status.

Despite these tempting alternatives we doubt this is the end for TikTok – its user base is surely still enormous, and the technical issues it’s facing will likely be ironed out. But it’s less clear whether changes will be made to the privacy policy, so if you don’t like what you’re reading, consider giving one of the options above a try instead.

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