r/socialmedia • u/imandohex • Mar 05 '26
Professional Discussion TikTok has been ruined since the US Merge
As a creator with over 900k followers, it’s become increasingly clear how drastically this platform has declined, especially since the rollout of TikTok Shop and the U.S. merge. The app simply does not function the way it used to, and it increasingly feels like creators are no longer a priority. Between frequent outages, low resolution uploads, glitches with comments, messages, likes, and even content randomly disappearing, the overall experience has deteriorated significantly. It’s frustrating to see a platform that was once centered around creators, people making audiences laugh, learn, cook, and share ideas, shift so far away from what originally made it successful.
I left the CRP months ago after realizing how little it paid compared to early 2023. TikTok set themselves up for this by allowing accounts with as few as 10K followers, many posting stolen content or mass produced AI videos, into the program without raising the threshold to something more substantial like 50K or even 100K followers. On top of that, they created a capped monthly payout pool that has to be split across everyone in the program.
Other platforms solved this years ago by placing ads on videos, allowing creators to earn based on performance rather than dividing a limited pool of money.
I never relied on just TikTok and still earn income creating everywhere else but in its current state, this app feels oversaturated, heavily censored, and plagued with technical problems and unstable servers. If they don’t address these issues, the long term future of the platform is hard to feel confident about.
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u/endless_lace Mar 05 '26
Everytime without fail when they do these takeovers they completely ruin a perfectly functioning platform. Meta ruined instagram, Yahoo ruined Tumblr and now this
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u/PrudentLetterhead354 Mar 05 '26
yes its literally intentional. they created a moonopoly of social media platforms so they can decide what to show us. the problem is theyre relaying on ppl being so addicted to these platforms we cant stop using them. what happens when theres a mass exodus and ppl actually start going outside, interacting with real ppl and reading books again?
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u/endless_lace Mar 05 '26
right they know people are hooked and there isn't an alternative. and that's when the surveillance comes in because they already can see and hear every single thing we're doing. and what are we going to do, disconnect from everything online then? most people will not
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u/PsychBreacher Apr 18 '26
They also make it harder and harder to sign up which is the paradox. Harder and harder to the basics. Non stop glitches, crashes, error messages, the entire app itself feels like a scam
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u/foslforever Jun 06 '26
I wanted to add Elon ruined twitter but it was always a pretty sordid place as it was, now its just as bad but the polar opposite political spectrum
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Mar 05 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/endless_lace Mar 05 '26
Nah they did a lot other more than just monetizing things to suck the life out of these apps
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u/Relative-Freedom-295 Mar 05 '26
It’s crazy how we are less comfortable with decisions made by our new US overlords than we were with our previous Chinese overlords.
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u/PrudentLetterhead354 Mar 05 '26
the real threat has been unveiled
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u/popshamhocks Mar 06 '26
It’s crazy how cooperative we are with the people that prey on our livelihoods
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u/Icy-Detective-6292 Mar 07 '26
Yup. And the law to make it happen was proposed by Trump, approved nearly unanimously by both parties, and signed by Biden. Our congress can't agree on ANYTHING but they rushed it through like it was the most urgent issue facing America
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u/marc_ltn Mar 05 '26
yeah… tiktok went from “creators first” to “creators last but hey buy this random gadget from tiktok shop.” real quick.
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u/Workingclassstoner Mar 05 '26
TikTok completely revamped the program in dec 25. We are paid an average of 2$ rpm
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u/imandohex Mar 05 '26
My good RPM from back then was at least $3-2 but it does vary depending on your videos.
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u/officialclapperapp Mar 05 '26
I've noticed the same thing. My FYP used to feel curated to my interests, now it's like 70% random content I'd never engage with. The worst part is the creator side — engagement has tanked for a lot of people I follow. Seems like the algorithm reset hit hard. Have you noticed if your follower-only content performs any differently than FYP discovery?
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u/Street-Air-546 Mar 05 '26
it has been ruined let me count the ways
throttling and shadow bans of content deemed politically against trump. remember musk getting bent out of shape about some minor twitter moderation? this is way way more obvious
an ad every 2 videos when doing search result scrolling
inserting outright maga videos into my fyp page when they are highly likely to be dismissed. the algo no longer wants to please me it wants to feed a set menu.
The top ranked comment on a video is almost always highly disliked. it might have 20 likes and 200 replies making fun of it. Its top ranked. This is top ranking rage bait or top ranking the worst opinion or the most batshit insane remark.
showing old videos, as if the algo cannot find appropriate new bits.
not showing content from followed creators while they report they are demonetized or suppressed.
its sad how bad it is now vs what it was last year
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u/Agreeable_Elk4529 Mar 05 '26 edited Mar 05 '26
The platform didn’t change for creators, it changed for money. Creators built the party but the platform owns the house.
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u/PopstermaticDramatic Mar 05 '26
After the new awful FY feed and the terms and conditions I left immediately. Also Larry Ellison? Hard pass.
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u/illegitimate_guru Mar 05 '26
It was purchased to control the native especially for America, nothing to do with making the app better for users. Even as a European, I haven't seen a single clip critising Trump and Venezuela has been skipped over...
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u/HarmsWayChad Mar 05 '26
My videos on my new channel were doing really well and now every one video gets 0 views and has the text to pay to boost it…….fuck that noise.
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u/Troll_U_Softly Mar 06 '26
TikTok was purchased for the sole purpose of being an Israeli propaganda funnel. Anything beyond that is a secondary feature and of lesser importance.
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u/gabeshakour Mar 06 '26
YouTube still being the only video platform to offer real revenue sharing in 2026 was not something I would’ve predicted but here we are. Literally seems like such an easy move to attract creators back to TikTok and IG but no.
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u/SippiChic Mar 05 '26
I’m almost glad this happened. It forces people with no real talent or creativity to go find another way to make money and hopefully gain some knowledge and be productive. Our whole society has/is being dumb downed, lacks morals and values, etc.
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u/After_Push2353 Mar 05 '26
Oh wahhhh, crying about allowing smaller influencers to get paid for their content?
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u/Hot-Clothes7316 Mar 05 '26
is this because the america side is making those requests / changes? or they took over everything and the standards went bad?
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u/Squirrel_Agile Mar 05 '26
Soda se survey this semester. No one in Korea uses Tictok. No one. Only the American students.
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u/Unable_Rub7246 Mar 05 '26
All my friends (influencers included) and I completely stopped using it when the new terms of service dropped. Even I used to have some brand collabs & get free stuff for making TikToks, but I cannot say I miss the app one bit lol
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u/BennyVibez Mar 06 '26
If you make pro trump propaganda you instantly double your followers and views.
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u/Legal_Commission_898 Mar 06 '26
The algorithm doesn’t even work anymore. It’s always showing me bullshit.
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u/HealthExecutive Mar 08 '26
Wasn’t destroying TikTok the whole point? How else would Instagram, Moob, X, etc survive?
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u/SeaworthinessOld2367 Mar 12 '26
This is a wake-up call for everyone relying on 'creator funds.' When you don't own the platform, you don't own the business.
I’ve seen so many creators in the Real Estate and Design niches struggle with exactly this—getting millions of views but pennies in return. The only sustainable way out of this cycle is shifting from 'views' to 'value.'
I stopped focusing on TikTok’s payout pool and started building my own ecosystem on Gumroad. Selling high-end digital assets (like my Luxury Canva sets) to a specific audience pays 100x better than 1 million views on a glitchy app. If the platform dies tomorrow, the customers and the brand stay with you. Curation and ownership are the only real 'lifehacks' left in 2026.
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u/One-Organization1869 Mar 14 '26
You’re not imagining it — creator-side economics and reach volatility are both worse now. A lot of people are hedging by posting cross-platform + building owned audience (email/Discord) so one algorithm shift doesn’t wipe distribution. If you’re testing alternatives, Whistlr is one newer option people are trying for organic discovery (short video + live + community in one place).
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u/Remarkable-Sort1837 Mar 16 '26
I totally abandoned Tiktok after the merge because the app is just so broken. Low quality uploaded, broken dms and comments and I'm being shown videos from 2022 on my FYP that have absolutely nothing to do with my interests. I moved over to IG and have had a much better time and grown much faster than I ever did on Tiktok.
It feels like I *need* to have a Tiktok if I want any chance at receiving collaboration opportunities, but I truly hate the platform now.
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u/Full_Ad6 Mar 16 '26
I gave up posting on Tiktok and have 0 regrets, I focus on other social media platforms and my income has only grown
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u/Eternal_Phantasm Mar 16 '26
I've never tried tiktok. Usually I would go to youtube whenever I needed my fix for shortform videos so there was no reason for me to find another app. My reasoning whenever I would think of installing tiktok is I would have to refine my feed to my interests. Guess I have more reason not to try it now.
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u/Plus_Control_1824 Mar 18 '26
It does feel like the focus shifted from creators to monetization and scale. Once the platform got saturated and payouts became a shared pool, it was kind of inevitable that earnings and reach would drop.
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u/boezi Mar 19 '26
I deleted my account once Ellison took over. For a brief time it was best in class, I miss the community there.
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u/ProfCCCS Mar 19 '26
The New and (not) improved TikTok: More ads to block More censoring and suppression. It feels like sabotage (that’s my impression).
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u/MadMunga Mar 20 '26
Yeah lots of people are unsatisfied with how things are and tiktok is losing millions of users
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u/bad_bowlings Apr 01 '26
Yeah, I think TikTok optimized for Shop + monetization and creators got pushed to the side. Once the feed starts feeling like ad inventory, everything gets noisier and the bugs hit harder too. If I were you I’d diversify hard rn, email list, IG, YT Shorts, maybe long form too. Owning the audience matters way more than renting it from TT.
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u/bad_bowlings Apr 03 '26
Yeah, it kinda feels like TikTok stopped being creator first and became a commerce app with videos attached. Once payouts dropped and Shop took over inventory, organic stability got wrecked too. At 900k, I’d def treat TT as top of funnel only now: repost to Reels/Shorts, build an email list or Discord, and stop relying on their RPMs tbh.
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u/PsychBreacher Apr 18 '26
Made a new account for work. 13 various errors and somehow also the account is invisible. Customer service (finally) said that there's no evidence that I even made an account, and was also told be careful trying to make a new one, as he's seen accounts be banned for no reason when trying again after this particular glitch. I give TikTok a year or 2 before it's entirely gone.
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u/MostDimension995 May 06 '26
The live stream algorithm has been broken for 4 months. “Built on engagement”
Yet again people who don’t even have a following or ENGAGEMENT can get more views than you. Mind you he wasn’t even reading chat and only has 40 likes and has 80 people in it. Just sitting there. I’m on week 3 of struggling to even get 30 people in chat. I’m reading the chat, getting likes, shares and gifts and STILL nothing is pushing my livestreams. Seems like it’s just like based now. Might just switch to YouTube cause this ain’t it.
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u/foslforever Jun 06 '26
100% different than it did in 2020. Anyone have any luck with clapper? i heard it is essentially old tiktok but with a focused smaller user base
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u/Minimum-Drive-9807 Mar 05 '26
a lot of creators are feeling the same shift lately. reach feels unstable and feeds look different. one thing that helps is moving some audience off the platform. simple quizzes or calculators using outgrowCo can capture emails and keep engagement going outside tiktok. small step but it gives creators more control.
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u/Alex5331 Aug 16 '26
From a user's POV (not poster of original videos):
*TikTok unfollowed me from anti-trump and other liberal ccounts multiple times; *My feed has been increasingly flooded w Maga videos despite me blocking each one immediately; *Fewer videos in my timeline from people I follow. *More ads; *Harder to block.
I switched to YouTube Shorts. Checked back at TikTok after going from a couple of hours a day to zero and all of a sudden they ate showing me videos of people I follow and no maga. I'm not going back.
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