U.S. federal regulators have filed suit against TikTok, accusing the massively popular social media video sharing platform of allegedly compromising the privacy of children throughout the country who use the app daily.
The lawsuit was filed Aug. 2 in Los Angeles federal court by the U.S. Justice Department against defendants associated with TikTok including the Chinese app's parent company, ByteDance Ltd.
"For years, Defendants (TikTok) have knowingly allowed children under 13 to create and use TikTok accounts without their parents' knowledge or consent, have collected extensive data from those children, and have failed to comply with parents' requests to delete their children's accounts and personal information," the Justice Department said in its complaint.
The lawsuit specifically accuses TikTok of violating the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA.)
The lawsuit further accuses TikTok of violating a 2019 court order, entered in L.A. federal court, which had settled an action brought by the federal government at that time, also accusing TikTok of violating COPPA by allegedly wrongly collecting private information about the children using the product.
Under that order, TikTok and its operators had agreed to pay a $5.7 million fine and had agreed to delete personal information it had stored for users under the age of 13 and remove the accounts of users whose age could not be verified.
The new lawsuit seeks another court order, directing TikTok to alter its policies and programs to comply with COPPA and requiring TikTok to pay potentially massive unspecified civil penalties of about $52,000 per alleged violation.
The Justice Department notes millions of American children under the age of 13 use TikTok.
TikTok, like other social media companies, has been subject to a torrent of lawsuits in recent years, as parents, school districts and others have accused the video sharing site and other social media platforms of fomenting and worsening a mental health crisis among America's youth. The lawsuits specifically say companies like TikTok have intentionally designed their products to addict young people and keep them using the product, even at the expense of their academic success, social abilities and family lives, particularly contributing to a rise in youth suicide.
Such lawsuits have been filed across the country, and have been funneled into federal court in San Francisco.
The new lawsuit doesn't address such mental health or addiction concerns.
Rather, the federal action addresses how TikTok has handled the private information of its youngest U.S. users.
According to releases from the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, the new legal action was launched by the DOJ at the request of the FTC.
The FTC asserted its investigation showed that, despite the 2019 court order, TikTok continued to maintain accounts for users under the age of 13, unless the young users explicitly told TikTok they were underage.
According to the FTC, TikTok "built back doors into its platform" to allow young users to create accounts without going through any kind of age verification process. TikTok allegedly classified such accounts as "age unknown" accounts.
The FTC says TikTok currently has millions of such "age unknown" accounts. The FTC asserts many of those accounts belong to users under the age of 13.
According to the FTC, TikTok human reviewers spent an average of 5-7 seconds reviewing account data to determine if a user was under the age of 13.
According to the FTC, TikTok then allegedly collected personal data from such young users to target advertising at them, without receiving consent from parents or notifying parents of their actions, allegedly in violation of the COPPA law.
The FTC asserted this allegedly illegal data collection also occurred when young users were in TikTok's so-called Kids Mode service.
“TikTok knowingly and repeatedly violated kids’ privacy, threatening the safety of millions of children across the country,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan in a provided statement. “The FTC will continue to use the full scope of its authorities to protect children online—especially as firms deploy increasingly sophisticated digital tools to surveil kids and profit from their data.”
The FTC and DOJ further assert TikTok has made it difficult for parents to delete their childrens' accounts or have outright refused to comply with parents' account deletion requests.
“This action is necessary to prevent the defendants, who are repeat offenders and operate on a massive scale, from collecting and using young children’s private information without any parental consent or control," said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton in the federal release announcing the legal action.