Skylightan alternative to TikTok built on open source technology, benefiting from emerging concerns TikTok’s US ownership changed last week. The startup, which makes a short-form vertical video app similar to TikTok, said it now has more than 380,000 users and continues to grow after a busy weekend.
Opened last year and supported by Mark Cuban and other investors, Skylight’s mobile app is built on the AT Protocol, the technology that also powers its decentralized X rival, Bluesky, which now already lor 42 million users.
Skylight, co-founded by CEO Tori White and CTO Reed Harmeyer, offers a built-in video editor, user profiles, support for likes, comments, and shares, and the ability to community curators to create custom feeds for others to follow.
The app currently has over 150,000 videos uploaded directly to the platform. It can also stream video from Bluesky thanks to AT Protocol integration.
Harmeyer said On Saturday, 1.4 million videos were played on the app the previous day, up 3x over the past 24 hours. The app also saw sign-ups increase by more than 150%. Other notable statistics include over 50% increase in returning users, over 40% increase in average video plays, and over 100% increase in posts generated.
This surge may have been triggered by concerns about TikTok’s ownership change and unfortunately its timing. technical problems.
TikTok already declare on January 22 the establishment of TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, designed to comply with Trump executive order require the company’s US operations to be sold to a group of American investors. TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance will now own less than 20% of the new entity.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco
|
13-15 October 2026
Agreement as a result of the increased tension between the US and China, which has led to concerns that TikTok could be a threat to national security, by collecting data of US citizens and through the influence of algorithms. But now, some TikTok users are more worried about new American investors and loyal to Trump.
These concerns have been magnified as TikTok pushes back privacy policy updatedwhich includes permission to track the user’s GPS coordinates, among other things. Users also point to the language in the privacy policy that says it the app will track your immigration status. Although the language is not new, and the inclusion is related to the country’s privacy laws, some users have started to advocate for the removal of the app.
Although it is not known how many TikTok users are actually following it, it is clear that some people are looking for an alternative. Over the weekend, Skylight CEO Tori White said the app added about 20,000 new users and growing. As of this January, the app has seen around 95,000 monthly active users.
White credits the app’s more open and customizable nature as the force behind its growth.
While Skylight has been profitable, it is still overshadowed by TikTok and its 200 million US monthly active users. Still, Skylight’s founder believes that approach provides an opening for growth.
“We’ve seen what happens when people dictate what gets pushed into people’s feeds,” White told TechCrunch. “It not only destroys the relationship of the creator with his followers, but the whole health of the platform. That’s why we built Skylight Social with open standards. We want the creator and the power of the user to be guaranteed by the technology. Not an empty promise, but an irrevocable right.”