Colette Moffroid | A&E editor
February 6, 2026
As of recent weeks, many TikTok users have begun to notice a decline in the captivation of the TikTok for-you-page. Some users have mentioned receiving videos they have already watched and liked or seeing more ads than usual. Senior Abby Rudderow mentioned that “each time [she opens] TikTok the first five videos on [her] fyp are videos [she has] already liked,” ruining the attention grabbing purpose of the app. These complaints are aspects of TikTok that I have experienced in recent weeks as well.
Many creators on the social media app have suspected that the recent decline in its function is a direct result of the recent addition of Oracle to the joint financial venture. Junior Emma Burke recalled “watching many videos telling [her] to block the Oracle account.” This was supposed to set your fyp back to normal; however, for me and many others, it did not change anything. The U.S. based company has been in charge of the user data of TikTok, however now they are also moving to join in on the financial assets of the app worth billions. A Beijing based company called ByteDance originally started TikTok as an app called Douvin released in China in September of 2016. Following this ByteDance acquired Musical.ly in November of 2017 for about $900 million. In August of the following year, the Chinese company merged Musical.ly into its own global platform which we now know as TikTok.
The company grew astronomically and has now become the global empire we are all addicted to. Many other companies quickly became interested in the social media app that quickly took over the planet. ByteDance has now established a joint venture in the U.S. with Silver Lake, MGX, and Oracle to keep TikTok accessible for the 200 million U.S. users. The three U.S. companies now each own a 15 percent stake in the joint venture while ByteDance keeps a 20 percent stake in their company.
I believe that TikTok being a multi billion dollar company is not shocking news to anyone and still does not answer the fact that the platform has declined in performance majorly as of 2026. The best explanation available is that the switch over to U.S. ownership has caused a more widespread use of censorship causing our feeds to be over run with the same boring videos scroll after scroll.
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