Report from MediaPost
In Brief – Federal District Judge George Wu has rejected TikTok’s bid to dismiss a class-action lawsuit brought by young people alleging that the company violated various laws and privacy standards in their home states. The plaintiffs, all under age 13, claim that TikTok collected names, email addresses, phone numbers, profile images, messages, location data, social network contacts and other data from users that the company knew were children that lied about their ages to gain full access to the platform. Judge Wu is overseeing a collection of similar children’s privacy complaints against TikTok that were filed in 2024 following the US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission charging TikTok with violating the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Along with the class action suits have been consolidated in the Central District of California before Wu, the DoJ lawsuit is also pending before the judge. TikTok urged Wu to dismiss the class action, arguing that even if the allegations were proven true, they wouldn’t show that the company violated state laws or privacy standards, saying that “collecting data of internet users is of course entirely routine commercial behavior.” Wu said the complaints warranted further proceedings.
Context – In 2019, Google agreed to pay a $170 million fine to the FTC and the State of New York and change a range of practices on YouTube for users under age 13 and content intended for young users, settling charges that the platform violated COPPA through much of the same conduct targeted by the class action in this case. Related consumer class action suits were initially dismissed based on the argument that COPPA regulated the same conduct and preempted the state laws that allowed private suits. However, in late 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that COPPA’s preemption clause was intended to apply only to state privacy standards that were inconsistent with the federal standards but were not intended to create an exclusive remedy scheme. Google and YouTube recently agreed to a $30 million settlement to resolve those claims.