The US Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have filed a lawsuit against TikTok for violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and its implementing regulations with the TikTok app. The social media platform disagrees with the allegations, claiming that many of them have either been addressed to relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate.
In a nutshell, the COPPA protects children by prohibiting online platforms from collecting personal information of children under 13 without parental consent. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok did not comply with this law and failed to honour parents’ requests to delete their children’s accounts despite knowing the accounts belonged to children under 13.
Specifically, TikTok knowingly allowed children to create regular TikTok accounts and to create, view, and share short-form videos and messages with adults and others on the regular TikTok platform. The complaint adds that TikTok knowingly “collected and retained a wide variety of personal information from these children without notifying or obtaining consent from their parents.”
For accounts made under the app’s “Kids Mode,” the company allegedly knowingly collected and retained children’s email addresses and other types of personal information. Additionally, the internal policies and processes for identifying and deleting TikTok accounts children created were ineffective.
This isn’t the first time such a complaint has been filed either. In 2019, Musical.ly, another ByteDance company acquired in 2017 and later merged with TikTok, was sued for violating COPPA. Musical.ly settled the lawsuit by agreeing to pay $5.7 million to resolve the allegations. The two companies were ordered to start complying with the COPPA, but a subsequent investigation by the FTC revealed that wasn’t the case, resulting in the current lawsuit against TikTok.
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