• by Colin Kirkland , 6 hours ago

Similar to other competing social apps, TikTok has begun rolling out an ad-free subscription option for accounts for users 18 years and up in the United Kingdom.

The “TikTok Ad-Free” option will cost U.K. users £3.99 (or $5.44) per month, offering subscribers the ability to forgo seeing ads on the popular video-sharing platform, while also disallowing their data to be used for advertising purposes.

While TikTok’s UK Managing Director Kris Boger likens the platform's ad-free subscription to enhanced user control, the option may also become a means of providing additional revenue for the company.

“We're moving away from an internet where the deal was you use the app for free but see ads, to one where the deal is increasingly: use the app for free and be profiled for personalised ads or pay to escape them,” app researcher Matt Navarra told the BBC.

“We are heading towards a two-tiered social internet,” Navarra added. “One version for people who can afford more control and privacy, and another version for everybody else.”

It is also possible that the ByteDance-owned company is making changes to better comply with the region's GDPR, a landmark legislation prohibiting companies to collect people's online data for advertising purposes.

Notably, Meta rolled out similar ad-free subscriptions across Facebook and Instagram in the UK last year.

TikTok initially began testing its ad-free subscription option in the UK in 2023.