Its the latest salvo fired against the Chinese social media platform
of ConsumerAffairs
Two agencies of the federal government have filed a lawsuit against TikTok, saying the social media platform fails to protect children's privacy.
The complaint, filed by the Department of Justice on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), charges TikTok and parent company ByteDance, of repeatedly violating the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). It also claims the the defendants also violated an existing FTC 2019 consent order against TikTok for violating COPPA.
TikTok knowingly and repeatedly violated kids privacy, threatening the safety of millions of children across the country, said FTC Chair Lina Khan. The FTC will continue to use the full scope of its authorities to protect children onlineespecially as firms deploy increasingly sophisticated digital tools to surveil kids and profit from their data.
The FTC further states that ByteDance and its related companies were aware of the need to comply with the COPPA Rule and the 2019 consent order and knew about TikToks compliance failures that put childrens data and privacy at risk.
The FTC claims TikTok didnt enforce age limits
The complaint claims that TikTok routinely maintained accounts of people it knew were younger than 13, unless the child told them how old they were. The suit claims human reviewers at the social media platform spent an average of only five to seven seconds reviewing each account to make their determination of whether the account belonged to a child.
The Justice Department is committed to upholding parents ability to protect their childrens privacy, said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton. This action is necessary to prevent the defendants, who are repeat offenders and operate on a massive scale, from collecting and using young childrens private information without any parental consent or control.
The U.S. government has long considered the Chinese-owned social media platform a threat to national security. In a rare bipartisan action, Congress passed a law requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a U.S. ban.
President Biden signed the legislation in April, giving ByteDance 270 days to sell. The Chinese firm sued to the U.S. government, declaring the law violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Photo Credit: Consumer Affairs News Department Images
Posted: 2024-08-02 19:27:23
