Report from Fox 5
In Brief – The District of Columbia has joined the litigation efforts of 13 states suing TikTok, accusing the social media platform of harming children through intentionally addictive design, deceptive claims about user safety, and other violations of consumer protection laws. DC’s lawsuit also alleges TikTok enables child sexual exploitation through livestreaming. Child safety advocates welcomed the action but questioned whether litigation is the best approach, noting that countries such as Britain, Australia, France and Germany have pursued legislative approaches, while also acknowledging that legislation in the US faces First Amendment challenges. TikTok rejected DC’s allegations as inaccurate and misleading, and said it had sought to work with attorneys general on industrywide solutions for more than two years.
Context – TikTok reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice in August to settle the agency’s 2024 complaint that the company had violated the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), with TikTok paying $400 million and the DoJ agreeing to vacate a set of privacy conditions imposed on the platform in 2019 based on earlier corporate missteps. The platform likely hoped that its regulatory and litigation trajectory had markedly improved since the platform’s US operations were sold to US-based owners by China-based ByteDance. Compared to the threat of a total shutdown, OK, but the new owners still acquired a full plate of open challenges. In September, a federal judge rejected that proposed $400 million settlement, arguing that TikTok’s change in ownership did not change its legal obligations under COPPA. And legacy privacy problems are but an appetizer compared to the collection of litigation, both by states and private plaintiffs, targeting TikTok and the other largest social media platforms for so-called addictive features like auto-play and notifications. Meta’s more than $12 billion settlement with 47 states reached in August, includes a further $5.3 billion bounty for the states if TikTok and YouTube reach similar settlement agreements, so there is plenty of financial incentive for the states to press ahead aggressively.