TikTok sued by US Justice Department for children’s data and privacy violations

The Justice Department sued TikTok on Friday, accusing the company of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Act and breaching an agreement it reached with another federal agency.

The complaint, filed jointly with the Federal Trade Commission in federal court in California, comes as the United States and the prominent social media company are embroiled in a new legal battle that will determine whether — or how — TikTok will continue to operate in the country.

The latest lawsuit centers on allegations that TikTok, a popular platform among young users, and its China-based parent company ByteDance violated a federal law that requires apps and websites aimed at children to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from children under 13. It also claims the companies failed to honor requests from parents to have their children’s accounts deleted and chose not to delete the accounts even when the companies knew they belonged to children under 13.

“This action is necessary to prevent the defendants, who are repeat offenders and operate on a large scale, from collecting and using the private information of young children without parental consent or control,” Brian M. Boyntonsaid the head of the Justice Ministry’s civil division in a statement.

TikTok said it disagreed with the allegations, “many of which relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been misrepresented.”

“We provide age-appropriate experiences with strong safeguards, proactively remove users suspected of being underage, and have voluntarily launched features like default screen time limits, family pairing, and additional privacy protections for minors,” the company said in a statement.

The United States decided to take legal action following an FTC investigation into whether the companies were complying with an earlier settlement involving TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly.

In 2019, the federal government sued Musical.ly, alleging that it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, by failing to notify parents about the collection and use of personal information from children under 13.

That same year, Musical.ly, which ByteDance acquired in 2017 and merged with TikTok, agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle the allegations. Both companies were also served with a court order requiring them to comply with COPPA, which the government says they have not complied with.

In the complaint, the Justice Department and the FTC allege that TikTok knowingly allowed children to create accounts and stored their personal information without informing their parents. This practice extends to accounts created in “Kids Mode,” a version of TikTok intended for children under 13. The feature allows users to watch videos but prohibits them from uploading content.

The two agencies say the information collected included in-app activity and other identifiers used to create user profiles. They also accuse TikTok of sharing the data with other companies — including Meta subsidiary Facebook and an analytics firm called AppsFlyer — to persuade “kids mode” users to be more present on the platform, a practice TikTok calls “retargeting less active users.”

The complaint says TikTok also allowed children to create accounts without having to provide their age or get parental approval, using credentials from third-party services. It categorized those accounts as “age unknown” accounts, which the agencies said number in the millions.

After parents discovered some of their children’s accounts and requested their removal, federal officials said TikTok required them to follow a complicated process to deactivate them and often did not honor their requests.

Overall, the government said TikTok implemented flawed policies that failed to prevent the proliferation of children’s accounts on its app and suggested the company failed to take the problem seriously. At least during some periods since 2019, the complaint said, TikTok’s human moderators spent an average of five to seven seconds reviewing accounts flagged as potentially belonging to a child. It also said TikTok and ByteDance have technology they can use to identify and remove children’s accounts, but they don’t use it for that purpose.

The alleged violations led millions of children under the age of 13 to use the regular TikTok app, allowing them to interact with adults and access adult content, the complaint said.

In March, a person familiar with the matter told the AP that the FTC’s investigation also seeks to determine whether TikTok violated a part of federal law that prohibits “unfair and deceptive” business practices by denying individuals in China access to U.S. user data.

Those allegations are not included in the complaint, which asks the court to fine the companies and issue a preliminary injunction to prevent future violations.

Other social media companies have also been criticized for how they handle children’s data.

In 2019, Google and YouTube agreed to pay a $170 million fine to settle allegations that the popular video site illegally collected personal information about children without their parents’ consent.

Last fall, dozens of U.S. states sued Meta Platforms Inc., the owner of Facebook and Instagram, for harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and intentionally designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addicted children to its platforms. A lawsuit filed by 33 states alleges that Meta routinely collects data on children under the age of 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of COPPA. Nine attorneys general also filed lawsuits in their respective states, bringing the total number of states taking action to 41, plus Washington, D.C.

This article was originally published by the Associated Press.