TikTok hit by over a dozen state lawsuits for allegedly harming teens

The bipartisan radical of AGs, led by New York’s Letitia James and California’s Rob Bonta, each filed lawsuits alleging violations of their ain state’s law. “Our probe has revealed that TikTok cultivates societal media addiction to boost firm profits,” Bonta said successful a statement. “TikTok intentionally targets children due to the fact that they cognize kids bash not yet person the defenses oregon capableness to make steadfast boundaries astir addictive content.” James called the lawsuits portion of an effort “to support young radical and assistance combat the nationwide younker intelligence wellness crisis.”

The suits reason TikTok violated the instrumentality by designing features and promoting contented harmful to children. It’s a strategy that’s had immoderate occurrence successful overcoming the liability shield of Section 230, which protects services from lawsuits implicit idiosyncratic speech. The AGs impeach TikTok of utilizing addictive features that support kids connected the app longer, similar autoplaying videos, promoting unrecorded contented and stories that are lone disposable temporarily, and offering quality filters connected videos. They besides notation unsafe challenges that person gone viral connected TikTok and successful immoderate cases been connected to teens’ deaths.

The enforcers allege this behaviour runs afoul of a assortment of laws. They assertion TikTok violated the national Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by profiting disconnected of information from kids nether 13 owed to “deficient policies and practices” that person allegedly knowingly fto minors connected the service. (The Department of Justice also precocious accused TikTok of violating COPPA successful a abstracted lawsuit.) And they accidental TikTok has misled the nationalist astir its information for kids. The New York suit, for example, alleges TikTok violated authorities user extortion instrumentality by selling its 60-minute surface clip bounds arsenic stricter than it really is, due to the fact that teens tin participate a passcode to disregard it. The suit besides claims TikTok failed to pass users astir the dangers of utilizing quality filters and misrepresenting its level arsenic not geared toward children contempt having “child-directed” content.

The suits petition courts to halt the allegedly harmful behaviour and assistance fiscal penalties. Of course, TikTok is already facing an adjacent much existential threat: the anticipation of a prohibition successful the US should it suffer its situation to a national law and neglect to divest from its Chinese genitor company, ByteDance.

In a statement, TikTok spokesperson Alex Haurek said the institution “strongly disagree[s] with these claims, galore of which we judge to beryllium inaccurate and misleading. We’re arrogant of and stay profoundly committed to the enactment we’ve done to support teens and we volition proceed to update and amended our product.” TikTok has tried to enactment with the radical of AGs for much than 2 years, Haurek said, “and it is incredibly disappointing they person taken this measurement alternatively than enactment with america connected constructive solutions to industrywide challenges.”

State AGs person taken a starring relation successful suing tech platforms for allegedly harming kids safety. New Mexico AG Raúl Torrez has sued some Snap and Meta for allegedly facilitating kid predators connected their platforms. And dozens of states filed suit against Meta past year for allegedly misleading the nationalist astir its harms to kids.