The US has filed a lawsuit against video sharing platform TikTok for ‘flagrantly violating’ the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
The US Department of Justice, on behalf of the country’s consumer protection agency the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), is also suing TikTok’s owner Bytedance and affiliated companies.
The complaint alleges that TikTok, Bytedance and its affiliates failed to comply with the COPPA requirement to notify and obtain parental consent before collecting and using personal information from children under 13.
It also accuses them of infringing an existing FTC 2019 consent order against TikTok for violating COPPA.
Defendants mentioned in the lawsuit, filed on 2 August, are Bytedance Ltd., based in the Cayman Islands; Bytedance Inc., a Delaware corporation; TikTok Ltd., a Cayman Islands company; TikTok Inc., a California corporation; TikTok Pte. Ltd., headquartered in Singapore; and TikTok US Data Security Inc., a Delaware corporation.
“The Justice Department is committed to upholding parents’ ability to protect their children’s 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 children’s private information without any parental consent or control.”
FTC chair Lina M Khan added: “TikTok knowingly and repeatedly violated kids’ privacy, threatening the safety of millions of children across the country.”
The FTC said ByteDance and its related companies were aware of the need to comply with the COPPA rule and the 2019 consent order.
But added that, instead of complying, ByteDance and TikTok spent years knowingly allowing millions of children under 13 on their platform.
According to the commission, as of 2020, TikTok had a policy of maintaining accounts of children that it knew were under 13, unless the child made an explicit admission of age.
The complaint further alleged that the app’s human reviewers spent an average of just five to seven seconds reviewing each account to make their determination of whether an account belonged to a child.
Moreover, the company is accused of continuing to collect personal data from underage users, including data that enabled TikTok to target advertising to them, without notifying their parents and obtaining their consent – a requirement under the privacy act.
Another allegation included in the complaint is that TikTok built back doors into its platform that allowed children to bypass the age gate aimed at screening children under 13.
TikTok allegedly allowed children to create accounts without having to provide their age or obtain parental consent to use TikTok by using credentials from third-party services like Google and Instagram.
Apparently, the video app classified such accounts as ‘age unknown’ accounts and these grew to number millions of accounts, according to the complaint.
Even when it directed children to use the TikTok Kids Mode service, a more protected version for kids, the complaint charges that TikTok collected and used their personal information in violation of COPPA.
TikTok also allegedly made it difficult for parents to request that their child’s accounts be deleted.
The Department of Justice and FTC’s complaint asks the court to impose civil penalties against ByteDance and TikTok, and to enter a permanent injunction against them to prevent future violations of COPPA.
The FTC Act allows civil penalties up to US$51,744 per violation, per day.
TikTok is under pressure in America following the April 2024 approval of a ban by the US Senate unless it is divested from Bytedance.
The Beijing-headquartered firm was given an ultimatum to sell the social media platform within nine months of the approval, or face it being blocked in the US.
The decision followed US politicians’ concerns over the app’s alleged data privacy issues, with Chinese companies legally required to share data with the country’s government upon request.
Cosmetics Business has reached out to TikTok for comment.
