Feels like this is about to be moot, but here we are.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday sued TikTok for the second time in recent months, accusing the social media company of violating deceptive trade law by downplaying its addictiveness and exposing children to explicit material.
The suit argues that TikTok, a short-form video app, violated the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act by listing itself on app stores as appropriate for children and not enforcing its community guidelines effectively. The Apple App Store lists TikTok as rated for those 12 and older, while the Microsoft and Google Play Stores list the app as appropriate for users who are 13 and older.
The 66-page filing, which has several redactions, details several TikTok posts containing inappropriate material that seemingly violate the guidelines and ways the app can circumvent parental controls on smartphones through an in-app browser. At one point, the lawsuit states the inappropriate material also included child sexual abuse content, although that section of the suit is largely redacted.
“TikTok actively worked to deceive parents and lure children onto their app despite the presence of an overwhelming amount of profane and illicit material,” Paxton said in a statement Thursday. “Companies may not jeopardize the health and wellbeing of Texas children by blatantly lying about the products they provide.”
A spokesperson for TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Several times the suit references an investigation conducted by the state that found videos which contained depictions of drug use, self-harm and sexually explicit acts. In December, Paxton’s office announced it would investigate several social media platforms’ privacy and safety practices for children, however the office did not clarify in its announcement Thursday whether the investigation mentioned in the lawsuit was related.
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This is the second lawsuit Paxton has filed against TikTok in just over three months, as the attorney general’s office filed a suit accusing the company of violating the new Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act. The SCOPE Act, which has received its own legal challenges, forbids companies from selling a minor’s personal information without parental approval, and the October lawsuit claims TikTok circumvented the law several times. The new lawsuit was filed in the same Galveston federal district as the first suit, and dozens of other lawsuits against social media platforms have been filed across the country in recent years.
I didn’t blog about that previous lawsuit, either I missed the news or just didn’t get to it. This all feels a little weird, since it looks like SCOTUS will uphold the federal ban that would take place on January 19, but I guess it’s not too late to aim for the news cycle. I should note that the SCOPE Act, the basis for that first suit Paxton filed against TikTok, was partially blocked by a different federal court last September. It’s not clear to me how that ruling affects Paxton’s litigation, which came after the ruling. My expectation is that this all goes away after SCOTUS does its thing. We should know soon enough.