Have you ever heard of the company Oracle? If you are scratching your head and wondering what the company has to do with TikTok, say hello to the app’s new main owner. Oracle, along with other smaller companies, are a part of the new U.S. entity part of the app now in control of TikTok. 

If you’re a frequent TikTok user, you may have heard that from late 2019 through 2025, the U.S. government repeatedly reviewed concerns that China could use the app to get private data from U.S. citizens. Spanning multiple presidencies and numerous legislative debates, the app’s security has been constantly watched and looked over. 

Tiktok was originally owned and operated by ByteDance, a Chinese corporation based in Beijing. The Chinese app was originally called “Musical.ly” back in 2017, gaining over one billion dollars in revenue and catching the attention of Zhang Yiming, TikTok’s former CEO. Nearing the end of 2018, “Musical.ly” was bought out and rebranded as TikTok and was heavily spread outwards towards national users.

Since then, ByteDance has been no stranger to splitting ownership of TikTok to other companies or governments. China itself has its own version of TikTok called Douyin, which is owned and operated by the Chinese government. Douyin is not just a different language setting but a separate app with its own content and servers which are heavily restricted and modified to the government’s views. Douyin is available exclusively in China while TikTok servers are for national users. This is what the U.S. government is somewhat trying to achieve.

Who are the new owners?

On January 22, 2026, TikTok officially gave ownership to a U.S.-based entity that is backed up by American investors, such as tech giant Oracle, along with several smaller companies. Despite this, ByteDance still owns around a 20% stake in the app. The majority ownership is now held by Oracle, Silver Lake, and Adu Dhabi-based MGX, which together hold a combined 45% stake. The leftover 35% is owned by eight smaller firms, which includes Dell CEO Michael Dell’s personal investment. This new ownership change was the result of a federal law that required ByteDance to sell the majority of its stake or be cut off from the U.S. market.

Oracle is a major American technology company that handles databases, software, and cloud storage. These database systems are used by many large organizations to store and manage data. Silver Lake is a major global technology investment firm, investing in large tech companies like Dell Technologies and Airbnb. Adu Dhabi, the last of the companies, focuses on managing technology in healthcare and aerospace with high paybacks.

TikTok Can Now Collect This Data

The same day when TikTok gave up most of their ownership, users were shown a pop up of the new privacy policy and terms and conditions once they opened the app. The following day, TikTok saw a drastic 150% jump in daily deletions which continued to grow. There was immediate backlash toward these new terms and conditions which left users unhappy and concerned. The list below contains the new information TikTok is looking to obtain from users through these new policies shown in the pop-up.

• Racial or ethnic origin
• National origin
• Religious beliefs
• Mental health diagnosis
• Physical health diagnosis
• Sexual life
• Sexual orientation
• Status as transgender
• Status as nonbinary
• Citizenship status
• Immigration status
• Financial information
• Government issued identification numbers, such as a driver’s license number

(List provided by CBS News and TikTok’s official website.)

What is not fully mentioned on the list are their new location policies, which have not been added quite yet. This is the one leading reason why people have deleted the app. Location tracking is not something new to TikTok; previously, the app only located your “approximate location,” meaning they only tracked what city or area code you were in while using the app. This was only ever used to show users specific content around them or area specific ads. Users were able to toggle location tracking off in settings.

To be clear, TikTok has not yet implemented their “precise location tracking.” This feature will be added in the unknown close future, which is said to be disabled via users settings. TikTok’s new location tracking will be able to pinpoint your exact location beyond what was previously tracked, being more precise from city or area code to specific locations or buildings. This new feature now uses your device GPS and WiFi to locate your exact location for more targeted ads and higher data collection. 

Do you need to accept these policies to continue to use TikTok?

For the most part, yes. If you opened and have been using TikTok in recent days, you were likely prompted with a pop-up that notifies you about these new upcoming changes. You were not given the ability to deny them if you wanted to continue using the app. However, it is rumored that some features can be toggled off through users settings on the TikTok app or through Apple Settings.

In all fairness, most people unknowingly agreed and continued on with their day not knowing these new policies were going to happen. What do you think of these new policies? Will they affect how you use the app? As these features roll out, will you delete the app along with numerous others, or will you continue utilizing it?