TikTok on Wednesday announced the launch of a new “Local Feed” in the U.S. version of the app, which displays content related to travel, news, events, shopping, and dining near the user’s current location. The feed’s arrival comes shortly after a change in TikTok’s terms of service under the new U.S. joint venture, which said that the app would begin to collect precise location information from TikTok users.
Today, TikTok confirms the reason it’s now asking for more accurate location information is to help power the Local Feed. However, it notes that users will be able to control whether or not precise location sharing is on, and the default will be set to “off,” making this an opt-in experience.
The Local Feed had rolled out in December to select European markets, including the U.K., France, Italy, and Germany.
The company explains in its announcement that the feed is meant to help users stay connected to their local community, and its posts are shown to people based on their location, the content’s topic, and when the content was posted. This makes it a more current feed of local information — like suggestions of new restaurants to try, local events, shopping suggestions, and more.
The new feature also ties into TikTok’s push to attract small businesses to its app, not only as content producers but as advertisers. This could help insulate it against further regulation and help it to claim, as Meta does, that it should not be reigned in because so many small businesses rely on its services to reach their customers.
TikTok notes that 7.5 million businesses currently use the app to reach global customers, and these businesses support more than 28 million workers, per a 2025 Oxford Economics report. The company also highlighted figures from the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, which found that 84% of TikTok small business users said the platform helped grow their business, a …