US lawsuit: TikTok management willfully ignored app’s dangers

On Tuesday, 14 US states supported their lawsuits against TikTok for failing to protect minors with serious accusations: the subsidiary of the Chinese company ByteDance had “exploited our young people knowingly. For profit,” stressed the Secretary of Justice and Attorney General of California, Rob Bonta. .

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Meanwhile, a failure has made it clear what the states are basing their harsh accusation on. An internal TikTok communication exchange that was accidentally made public suggests for the first time that the operator largely ignored the video app’s known dangers to child protection and rolled out controversial manipulative features anyway .

Charge: Deceiving the public

According to a report by US public broadcaster NPR, the confidential material was part of a two-year investigation into TikTok by state attorneys general. The states argue that the multibillion-dollar company misled the public about the risks. Dozens of internal memos, documents and research data were drawn up in each of the individual lawsuits filed by state regulators. Prosecutors had previously signed non-disclosure agreements with TikTok.

However, in one of the court filings, which came from the Kentucky attorney general’s office, the wording was wrong. Therefore, the Kentucky public radio station managed to expose fragments of the supposedly unrecognizable material simply by copying and pasting, thus making about 30 pages available to the public.

After 260 videos, the addiction takes hold

NPR editors said they reviewed all redacted portions of the complaint, in which TikTok executives openly discussed a number of dangers to children and teens on the app, which is especially popular among those age groups. . Explosive material is mainly study summaries and internal communications. They are said to show that some remedial measures, such as time management tools, would only lead to a negligible reduction in screen time. However, the company decided to introduce and announce the features.

According to the documents, TikTok has determined the exact number of views needed for the personalization algorithm to have a massive effect and use the app to become a habit: 260 videos. After that, “a user is likely to become addicted to the platform,” state researchers say. “While this may sound substantial, TikTok videos can be as short as 8 seconds and are automatically played to viewers in rapid succession.” According to this formula, the average user develops addiction in less than 35 minutes.

TikTok’s own research

TikTok’s own research also states that “compulsive use correlates with a range of negative mental health outcomes, including loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, depth of conversation, empathy and increased anxiety.”

The documents also show that the operator was aware that “compulsive use also interferes with essential personal obligations, such as adequate sleep, work/school obligations, and contact with loved ones.” TikTok is also known to associate content that promotes eating disorders (“inspiration”) with issues such as body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression.

The court documents are now sealed

After Kentucky Public Radio published excerpts of the redacted material, a US federal court judge sealed and barred the entire complaint at the request of the attorney general’s office. The move is intended to ensure that no further “settlement documents and related information, confidential trade and business secrets and other proprietary information” are illegally disseminated, according to an emergency motion to keep the complaint confidential. Kentucky officials introduced the motion Wednesday. A TikTok spokesperson defended the company’s existing child protection measures and condemned the posts.

In Europe, the British regulatory authority Ofcom fined TikTok millions in July for errors in information about the protection of minors. In the EU, the platform operator is considered a “gatekeeper” and must comply with the stricter obligations of the Digital Services Act (DSA). In April, the company “voluntarily” suspended reward features on TikTok Lite after the EU Commission threatened to take tougher action against the program.

(child)