By Blake Wolf, OAN Staff
Friday, August 2, 2024 2:57 PM
TikTok and its parent company ByteDance are bracing themselves after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) formally filed a lawsuit alleging that the social media platform illegally collected data from underage users.
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TikTok is accused of allowing children under the age of 13 to create accounts on the popular social app. Additionally, the lawsuit accuses the company of secretly collecting data from minors’ accounts and refusing to comply with parental requests to delete their children’s profiles.
“For years, Defendants knowingly allowed children under the age of 13 to create and use TikTok accounts without their parents’ knowledge or consent, collected extensive data from those children, and failed to comply with parental requests to delete their children’s accounts and personal information,” the 31-page civil lawsuit states.
The lawsuit follows an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, which alleged that TikTok violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and also violated an agreement the FTC reached with TikTok in 2019 regarding its policies toward children.
FTC Chair Lina Khan weighed in on the ongoing legal battle.
“TikTok has knowingly and repeatedly violated children’s privacy and threatened the safety of millions of children across the country,” she said.
The lawsuit also claims that TikTok offers a “Kids Mode” system for users under the age of 13, but that it does not obtain parental consent and is “easily circumvented.”
“Kids Mode is designed for kids in the US, where they can enjoy TikTok’s fun video features while limiting the information collected from them. Kids can explore their creativity by watching videos from other creators and filming their own videos with music and special effects. Kids can save these videos directly to their device, but the videos are not stored by us or viewable by other users. Kids’ interactive experience is also limited, for example they cannot message other users or see their profile,” TikTok said.
“As a result, for years millions of American children under the age of 13 used TikTok and Defendants collected and retained their personal information,” the legal documents said.
Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that TikTok moderators spend an average of just five to seven seconds each time evaluating accounts that may belong to children.
A TikTok spokesperson responded, saying the platform simply offers an “age-appropriate experience with rigorous safety measures.”
“We disagree with these allegations, many of which are factually incorrect or relate to past events or practices that we have already addressed,” TikTok said in a statement.
However, the legal battle between ByteDance and the Department of Justice is not new, with Congress previously passing a bill to ban TikTok from U.S. networks and app stores if the platform is not sold to a U.S. company.
The ban could come into effect as early as January 2025.
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