On Friday, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against TikTok in response to FTC claims that the app and its Chinese parent firm, ByteDance, infringed upon children’s online privacy safeguards.
Claiming to have violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by continuing to collect data on millions of children under the age of 13 without their parents’ consent and failing to honor parents’ data deletion requests, TikTok is accused in a 2019 settlement with the FTC in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
“TikTok deliberately and repeatedly breached kids’ privacy, jeopardizing the safety of millions of youngsters across the country,” stated FTC chair Lina Khan. “As companies use more advanced digital tools to track children and make money off of their data, the FTC will keep using all of its powers to keep kids safe online.”
A representative from TikTok, Alex Haurek, denied the claims and stated that many of them “relate to past events and practices” that were either unfounded or had already been cleared up.
The CEO assured users via email that the platform will be continually updated and improved, and that the company is proud of its efforts to protect minors.
Over 170 million people in the US use TikTok, making it one of the biggest social media sites online. The younger generation is its biggest fan base.
In April, lawmakers voted to either prohibit TikTok or compel its sale due to the app’s ties to its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance. This decision was followed by the DOJ lawsuit. Oral arguments will be held in September by an appeals court in response to TikTok’s challenge to the statute.
Legal action against TikTok began with a 2019 settlement between Musical.ly and the FTC, in which the company agreed to pay $5.7 million—the largest civil penalty for a COPPA violation at the time—before Epic Games settled for $275 million in 2022.
In June, the FTC notified the DOJ that it had discovered problems during a compliance review of the previous settlement and had forwarded its investigation into TikTok to them. According to the lawsuit filed on Friday, TikTok started breaking the terms of its 2019 FTC settlement not long after it became effective.
The government body stated that it discovered insufficient safeguards for children on TikTok. The complaint claims that human reviewers “during at least some periods” spent only five to seven seconds looking at each account, even though the corporation is supposed to check if the user is younger than 13.
The lawsuit further claims that TikTok enabled new users to bypass the app’s age verification by signing up using their Google and Instagram accounts. This method led to millions of accounts classified as “age unknown,” many of which could potentially be children, the FTC and DOJ allege.
Even while TikTok’s “Kids Mode” is meant to make the platform safer for kids, the lawsuit claims that the corporation nonetheless tracked kids and created profiles for them. The lawsuit claims that TikTok sent “less active users” customized advertisements by sharing their “Kids Mode” data with Facebook and AppsFlyer.
According to the FTC and DOJ, TikTok not only ignored parental requests to remove their children’s data, but the company also made it impossible for parents to submit such requests.
According to the complaint, a number of TikTok workers had previously alerted corporate leadership to the possibility of COPPA violations due to these shortcomings.
Secretary of the Department of Justice Brian Boynton issued a statement affirming the agency’s dedication to parents’ right to privacy. “The defendants are repeat offenders and operate on a massive scale. This action is necessary to prevent them from collecting and using the private information of young children without parental consent or control.”
Next steps: ByteDance and TikTok were sought after in the complaint in order to impose penalties. Although a settlement would probably result in a significantly smaller amount, fines might reach over $50,000 per infringement, bringing the total financial penalty in the case to tens of billions of dollars.
In order “to prevent future violations of the COPPA Rule by Defendants,” the plaintiffs are requesting a permanent injunction in the lawsuit.
What does the lawsuit not include? Claims that TikTok misled its American users into thinking that its Chinese employees could not access their data are not part of the DOJ’s lawsuit. According to a March AWN article, the FTC was looking into concerns over TikTok’s data transfer to China.
The FTC allegedly included claims of that deceit when it submitted the complaint to the DOJ for litigation, according to two individuals with firsthand knowledge of the referral. According to the sources, however, the Department of Justice (DOJ), which has ultimate discretion over the lawsuit’s contents, decided against pursuing that.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and her team have been actively investigating TikTok-related national security issues, such as the legislation that would have forced the company to sell the app, although Justice Department officials declined to comment on the specifics of the referral at the time. Right now, TikTok is arguing that the law is unconstitutional.
