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This Friday, the United States sued the TikTok platform, claiming that it collected data of underage users without parental permission, violating the privacy of underage users.
The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission teamed up to file a civil lawsuit alleging that the popular video clip-sharing app violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
According to US authorities, the company “commonly violated laws protecting children’s privacy”.
The report concluded that, due to the methods of the platform owned by China’s ByteDance Group, millions of children under the age of 13 were subject to “extensive data collection” and also “interacted with adult users and accessed adult content,” the department said in a statement.
Some believe TikTok “knowingly” allowed minors to create accounts and browse its social network, which is frequented by 170 million people in the United States.
The Justice Department alleges that since 2019, the app and its parent company “collected and stored extensive personal information about these minors without notifying their parents or obtaining their consent. This was true even for accounts created in ‘Kid Mode.'”
Deputy Attorney General Brian Boynton was quoted in the release as saying the legal action is “necessary to prevent children under 13 from using the regular TikTok app.”
He added that there was also a need to prevent “repeat and large-scale defendants from collecting and using young children’s private data without parental consent or control.”
The U.S. consumer protection agency (FTC) submitted a report to the Justice Department in June because it “had reason to believe” that TikTok and ByteDance “are violating or are in the process of violating the law.”
follow up
The FTC is investigating to ensure the platform is complying with the terms of an amicable settlement reached in 2019, when it accused TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly, of improperly collecting personal data of underage users.
TikTok agreed to pay $5.7 million in damages and agreed to comply with the provisions of the COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) law passed in 1998.
In a message on the X network, TikTok said it was “disappointed that the agency chose litigation rather than continuing to collaborate to find a reasonable solution.”
“We disagree with the allegations, many of which relate to past practices that were either falsely raised or have already been resolved,” a company spokesman told AFP.
“We’re proud of the work we do to protect children,” he added, referring to safeguards the company has “voluntarily” put in place, such as deleting user accounts of children under 13 and limiting viewing time.
The U.S. Congress passed a bill in April forcing ByteDance to sell its flagship app to a local company within the next nine months and threatening to ban its activities in the United States.
U.S. authorities and lawmakers have accused her of collecting data on American citizens for the Chinese government, arguing that this poses a threat to national security.
“The FTC will continue to use its full authority to protect children online, particularly as companies deploy increasingly sophisticated digital tools to monitor children and profit from their data,” the agency’s president, Lina Khan, said Friday.
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