California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New York Attorney General Letitia James led the coalition of 14 attorneys general, who each filed suits in state court over violations of state consumer protection laws.
Bonta said a national investigation into TikTok found that the platform “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 wrote.
TikTok’s business platform allegedly prioritizes maximizing young users’ time through its algorithm, which determines what users see on the app’s “For You” page. This helps boost the platform’s revenue through targeted advertising, the suits alleged.
TikTok’s “autoplay” feature, which continuously plays new and temporary posts, along with its “endless/infinite scroll,” are also mentioned in the suits.
In doing so, TikTok allegedly deceives users by claiming it prioritizes user safety through various tools, community guidelines and content moderation features, the attorneys general said.
“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,” Bonta’s office wrote in a release.
A TikTok spokesperson told The Hill the company “strongly disagrees” with the claims, describing them as “inaccurate and 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,” the spokesperson wrote.
“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 spokesperson said.
Read more at digital-staging.thehill.com.
