The Department of Justice is suing TikTok for violating children’s privacy laws
The US Department of Justice is suing TikTok for violating children’s privacy laws and violating a 2019 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission for prior privacy violations. The lawsuit stems from a previous investigation of the company by the Federal Trade Commission, its privacy case filed with the DoJ earlier this year.
The FTC has been looking into whether TikTok violated the terms of a previous privacy agreement with Musical.ly, which was acquired by ByteDance before TikTok was launched. According to , the investigation found that TikTok “willfully” violated the 2019 agreements and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
In a statement, the Justice Department also cited TikTok’s collection of personal information about children on its site and failure to comply with requests to have the information removed.
From 2019 until now, TikTok intentionally allowed children to create regular TikTok accounts and create, view, and share short videos and messages with adults and others in the general TikTok environment. The defendants collected and stored a wide range of information from these children without notifying or obtaining consent from their parents. Even with accounts created in “Kids Mode” (a condensed version of TikTok aimed at children under 13), the defendants illegally collected and stored children’s email addresses and other types of personal information. Furthermore, when parents found their children’s accounts and asked the defendants to delete the accounts and the information on them, the defendants often failed to honor those requests. The defendants also had deficient and ineffective internal policies and procedures for identifying and removing TikTok accounts created by children.
In a statement, TikTok said it disputes the allegations, saying it has faced the behavior described by the Department of Justice. “We do not agree with these allegations, many of which relate to past events and practices that are not true or have been corrected,” said the company. “We are proud of our efforts to protect children, and we will continue to update and improve the platform. To that end, we provide an age-appropriate experience with strong protections, quickly remove suspected young users, and voluntarily implement features such as automatic screen time limits, Family Pairing, and additional privacy protection for children.”
The case comes at an awkward time for TikTok, which will face the Justice Department in federal court over a law that aims to force ByteDance to sell the app or face the United States.
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