Tiktok, a short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance, is facing yet another lawsuit over allegations of deceptively targeting teens.
Mike Hilgers, the attorney general of Nebraska, has filed a complaint against the social media platform for allegedly deceiving parents about the app’s safety features and misleadingly targeting teens.
Tiktok was charged with purposefully enticing teenagers and young people into a cycle of social media activity without providing enough attention to the risks connected with such behavior, as shown in a report released by the Nebraska Examiner.
READ ALSO: TikTok removes 1.7 million videos by Nigerian users in Q4 2023
In the lawsuit, Hilgers also mentioned that parents and other young users were misled into thinking that TikTok had sufficient measures in place to protect children, but in reality, the app was exposing them to potentially harmful content, which exacerbated addiction and mental health issues.
The core of the case is the allegation that TikTok intentionally uses its “golden audience” of teens to profit from the distribution of inappropriate information to younger users. Undercover agents, pretending to be 13 to 17-year-olds, claimed to have unintentionally come across objectionable films on their feeds.
While reacting to the lawsuit, TikTok, which has prompted the U.S. government to pass legislation banning the social media platform unless it is sold to a government-approved buyer due to its perceived irregular activities, defended its safety measures, citing industry-leading safeguards designed to protect teenagers.