The legal troubles for social media app TikTok continue to multiply.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta and 13 other attorneys general on Tuesday filed separate lawsuits against the Chinese-owned company, alleging violation of state consumer protection laws and severe harm for young users.
The lawsuits come as the platform is challenging a U.S. law requiring that the TikTok owner ByteDance divest the property or else face a nationwide ban, a legal struggle that may go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
TikTok has 170 million users nationwide, including 16 million in California.
“Our investigation has revealed that TikTok cultivates social media addiction to boost corporate profits. TikTok intentionally targets children because they know kids do not yet have the defenses or capacity to create healthy boundaries around addictive content,” Bonta said in a statement Tuesday.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who co-led the effort with Bonta, said in a statement that “TikTok claims that their platform is safe for young people, but that is far from true.”
The California lawsuit was filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court. It seeks “significant penalties” from TikTok, including an injunction against the platform — effectively shutting it down — and monetary damages to address its alleged misconduct.
In response to the lawsuit, TikTok released a statement strongly disagreeing with the claims made, “many of which we believe to be inaccurate or misleading.”
“We’re proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we’ve done to protect teens and we will continue to update and improve our product. We provide robust safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screentime limits, family pairing, and privacy by default for minors under 16,” the statement said.
The company added that it has “endeavored to work with the attorneys general for over two years, and it is incredibly disappointing they have taken this step rather than work with us on constructive solutions to industrywide challenges.”
Among the TikTok features that Bonta said were damaging to young people were so-called “beauty filters,” which allegedly fosters unrealistic beauty standards; the autoplay feature and infinite scroll features, which the lawsuit contends compels people to spend more time on the platform; TikTok stories and TikTok live, which offer limited-time engagement that allegedly lead users to compulsively check the app; and the “like” and “comment” features, that allegedly also lead to compulsive use.
“TikTok employs a coordinated array of features, tools, content moderation efforts, community guidelines, and public assurances intended to promote a public narrative that the platform is appropriate and safe for young users and that TikTok prioritizes user safety. In truth, such features and efforts do not work as advertised, the harmful effects of the platform are far greater than acknowledged, and TikTok does not prioritize safety over profit,” according to a statement from Bonta’s office.
Tuesday’s legal action consisted of lawsuits being filed in 13 states and the District of Columbia, by both Republican and Democratic attorneys general. According to Bonta’s office, 23 states now have taken legal action against TikTok.
Local News
