The Justice Department filed suit against TikTok on Friday, accusing the corporate of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and violating an agreement with one other federal agency.
The lawsuit, filed jointly with the Federal Trade Commission in a federal court in California, comes at a time when the United States and the well-known social media company in yet one more legal dispute This will determine whether – and the way – TikTok will proceed to be lively within the country.
The latest lawsuit centers on allegations that TikTok, a trend-setting platform popular with young users, and its China-based parent company ByteDance violated a federal law that requires child-oriented apps and web sites to acquire parental consent before collecting personal information from children under 13.
TikTok didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.
“This action is necessary to prevent the defendants, who are repeat offenders and operate on a large scale, from collecting and using private information from young children without parental consent or control,” Brian M. Boynton, chief of the Justice Department's Civil Division, said in a press release.
The US decided to file the lawsuit after an investigation by the FTC The investigation examined whether the businesses complied with an earlier agreement with TikTok's predecessor, Musical.ly.
In 2019, the federal government sued Musical.ly, alleging that the corporate violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by failing to tell parents in regards to the collection and use of private information from children under 13.
In the lawsuit, the Justice Department and the FTC allege that TikTok knowingly allowed children to create accounts and stored their personal information without notifying their parents. This practice also extends to accounts created in “Kids Mode,” a version of TikTok for kids under 13, the Justice Department said in a press release explaining the lawsuit.
The two agencies claim that the data collected included activity on the app and other identifiers used to construct user profiles. They also accuse TikTok of sharing the information with other corporations – equivalent to Meta's Facebook and an analytics company called AppsFlyer – to encourage “kid mode” users to be on the platform more often. TikTok called this practice “retargeting less active users.”
The criticism says TikTok also allowed children to create accounts without having to offer their age or obtain parental consent by utilizing login credentials from third-party services. These accounts were classified as “age unknown,” and the variety of accounts has now grown into the tens of millions, in accordance with authorities.
After parents discovered a few of their children's accounts and demanded they be deleted, federal officials said their demands had not been met. In a press release explaining the lawsuit, Justice said the alleged violations resulted in tens of millions of youngsters under the age of 13 using the regular TikTok app, which allows them to interact with adults and access adult content.
In March, an individual aware of the case told AP that the FTC's investigation was also looking into whether TikTok violated a part of the federal law prohibiting “unfair and deceptive” business practices by denying that individuals in China had access to U.S. user data.
These allegations weren’t a part of the lawsuit, which seeks civil penalties and injunctive relief.
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