Key Takeaways:
For beauty brands, TikTok’s value hinges less on ownership and more on consistent performance, reliability, and operational continuity.Any disruption to organic reach or creator trust risks weakening the engine that makes TikTok effective for beauty.TikTok is still critical, but brands are actively reducing single-platform risk through diversification and owned channels.
When TikTok confirmed a new ownership structure for its US operations earlier this year, the announcement landed less like a headline moment and more like a stress test. After years of regulatory pressure, legal uncertainty, and repeated threats of a ban, the deal effectively secured TikTok’s future in the US market, but it also forced brands to confront the harder question of what happens to beauty when the platform it depends on enters a new era of governance.
For an industry that has built entire businesses on TikTok’s ability to surface unpolished creator content at scale, the issue was never simply who owns the app. It was whether the mechanics behind it like data oversight, content moderation, algorithmic incentives, and creator protections would change in ways that alter how beauty is discovered, discussed, and sold.
Under the terms of the agreement, TikTok’s US business has been restructured into a newly formed entity designed to comply with US national security legislation. The company is now majority owned by a consortium of American and allied investors, while ByteDance retains a minority stake just under 20%, the maximum allowed under the law. A majority-American board of directors oversees governance, and US user data is now stored domestically and monitored by Oracle, which is responsible for security audits and compliance.
Crucially for brands, the deal places heightened emphasis on data tracking, information governance, and oversight of the recommendation algorithm, rather than day-to-day creative operations. That distinction matters. While ownership headlines suggested a clean break, the reality is more nuanced, and it is the increased scrutiny around how data is collected, how claims are moderated, how sales are made, and how algorithms are audited that is generating unease across beauty, not the presence of new shareholders alone.
“While elements [like creativity and community] are extremely important to us still, we are equally interested in the policies regarding patent protection as the platform evolves,” Sarah Potempa, CEO of the buzzy Beachwaver, said to BeautyMatter. “As an independent brand with 12 patents and 21 trademarks, it is super important for us to learn how ‘dupe’ culture will be treated on this platform,” she continued.
TikTok’s Growing Weight in the Beauty Funnel
Despite the uncertainty, TikTok’s commercial importance to beauty brands has only deepened. For Performance Beauty Group, parent company to Grande Cosmetics, TikTok has evolved from a marketing channel into all-out infrastructure. “TikTok is meaningfully more central to our customer acquisition strategy today than it was 12 months ago,” Sabeen Mian, President of Performance Beauty Group, told BeautyMatter.
“We now view it as a true full-funnel platform, driving awareness and discovery through creator storytelling, building consideration through education and real results, and enabling seamless purchase within the same ecosystem,” Mian continued. That scale is tangible. Grande now works with an average of 20,000 TikTok affiliates generating content monthly, collectively driving nearly 15 million views in December alone. Figures like this underpin how tightly TikTok now connects inspiration to conversion in beauty.
At FlutterHabit, Director of Marketing Kate Soueid described a similar shift. “What started as a fun experiment has become a core discovery and education channel for us,” she said to BeautyMatter. “In beauty, people want to see real results on real people, and TikTok does that better than almost anywhere else.”
Asked whether US-based ownership increases confidence, brand leaders were cautious. Geography alone is not enough. “US-based ownership is something we’re still evaluating in terms of long-term impact,” Mian said. “It has the potential to increase confidence, particularly around governance, accountability, and brand safety.” For science-backed brands, she added, clearer standards could help combat misinformation and knockoffs, provided they don’t come at the expense of creator expression.
Soueid was more direct. “Confidence comes from consistency, not geography,” she said. “Brands don’t need promises, but we do need the platform to work on a random Tuesday morning.” She pointed to early TikTok Shop outages during the transition that forced FlutterHabit to temporarily pull ad spend. “Brands aren’t afraid of the change, but we are afraid of unpredictability.”
That concern is widely shared. Complaints from creators about algorithm changes, broken FYP displays, system lags, and intermittent data outages have begun flooding other social media platforms, although brands like Beachwaver remain largely optimistic. “Being well-versed in a variety of platforms has always been part of the Beachwaver strategy, so this will remain unchanged,” said Potempa. “We will continue to prioritize the different audiences we have on the variety of platforms and continue to ‘read and react’ to however the platforms may adjust moving forward.”
Does US Ownership Actually De-Risk TikTok for Beauty?
From an agency perspective, Leslie Ann Hall, founder of Iced Media, believed the most visible impact of US governance would emerge around claims and moderation, not reach. “Historically, [TikTok] has been a platform where creators can speak more freely about the products and services they use and their perceived impact,” Hall said to BeautyMatter.
Under US ownership, she sees potential for increased moderation in regulated or medical-adjacent categories, including acne treatments, weight-loss supplements, cosmetic procedures, and before-and-after content. “That doesn’t necessarily mean those categories will disappear,” she added, “but it does suggest a shift toward more structured language, clearer disclosures, and tighter guardrails around how outcomes are framed.”
Importantly, Hall does not anticipate sweeping algorithmic disruption. “From our perspective, it has largely been business as usual since TikTok’s transfer of ownership in late January,” she said, noting continued momentum across TikTok Shop and paid media in Q1. If scrutiny increases, she expects it to appear unevenly by category, with skincare and wellness facing more oversight than color cosmetics or fragrance.
While brands can diversify spend and build owned channels, creators absorb platform risk more directly. This is a dynamic that is already influencing TikTok’s cultural energy. “I do think the energy has shifted,” Soueid said. “We’ve already seen large creators openly talk about diversifying to other platforms. This is a real livelihood for creators.” She added that while brands can weather instability, the platform doesn’t work without them.
Mian echoed that concern, warning against any changes that undermine organic discovery. “My biggest concern would be any change that limits organic discovery or narrows visibility to only established or overly commercial voices,” she said. TikTok’s power, she pointed out, lies in its ability to elevate everyday consumers alongside top creators—a dynamic that has fueled trust and conversion in beauty.
Discovery, Data and Trust
For August founder Nadya Okamoto, the ownership transition has brought relief, but not clarity. “Relief because it’s been a question mark about the fate of this app for the last couple years,” she said to BeautyMatter. At the same time, she noted that trust has been dented. “Given the political climate, the trust in this particular platform has absolutely been hurt.”
As a brand, August has pulled back from TikTok as a central acquisition channel while expanding retail distribution. But discovery remains the core concern. “The TikTok algorithm has been best for [raising brand awareness],” Okamoto said. “If that changes then we risk having it just be like Instagram but with less trust and transparency.”
She also flagged moderation risk for educational content, particularly for brands like theirs operating in sexual wellness and health–adjacent spaces, categories where increased oversight could meaningfully reshape storytelling.
Hall framed the new ownership less as a rupture and more as maturation. “I don’t think TikTok will become more sanitized as a result of US ownership,” she said. Instead, she likened the shift to Instagram’s evolution, where stricter claim policies forced brands to sharpen storytelling rather than abandon creativity. “The brands and categories that continue to win won’t be the ones immune to new rules,” Hall opined. “They’ll be the ones who know how to tell compelling stories inside them.”
Potempa echoed this sentiment. “We haven’t seen too much of a change, except for some internal features,” she said on learning about the new shipping guidelines. “We are looking into all of the options to be the best partner for our community and provide the best and fastest shipping,” she continued. Currently Beachwaver runs its warehouse in Illinois, which has been part of a wider content strategy, bringing the community into the shipping and logistics part of running a business.
For beauty, the message is clear. Right now, TikTok remains indispensable to beauty, although no longer unquestioned. The platform’s new US ownership may remove existential risk, but it introduces a new test of whether it can build trust without being politicized or weaponized, and mature operationally without eroding the creator-first dynamics that made it so powerful for beauty in the first place. As Soueid put it plainly, “Trust is the business.” For beauty brands watching closely, the next chapter of TikTok will be judged not by who owns it, but by whether it still works.
