The Biden administration fired another shot across the bow at TikTok and its Chinese-owned parent ByteDance.
The popular video sharing app was slapped with a lawsuit by the Justice Department for failing to protect children’s privacy, according to the complaint filed in California federal court Friday.
The civil lawsuit, which was joined by the Federal Trade Commission, comes as TikTok fights a new law that would force ByteDance to divest TikTok’s US assets by Jan. 19 or face a ban.
In the latest broadside, the feds allege that TikTok violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, also known as COPPA, which bans websites from collecting, using or disclosing personal information from children under the age of 13 without their consent.
“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,” Brian M. Boynton, head of the DOJ’s Civil Division, said in a statement.
The complaint said TikTok, which has 170 million US users, has allowed children to make accounts and share content on the app with adults since 2019.
It claims TikTok held onto “a wide variety” of children’s personal information without their parents’ approval – even those children who signed up for TikTok’s “Kid Mode,” a version of the app for users under 13.
The lawsuit alleges TikTok even failed to delete some children’s accounts after parents’ requests.
TikTok employees allegedly acknowledged that their actions were violating US law.
“[T]hat shouldn’t be happening at all or we can get in trouble…because of Coppa,” an employee said after some underage children’s accounts were not deleted, according to the suit.
“We disagree with these allegations, many of which relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed,” a TikTok spokesperson told The Post in a statement.
“We offer age-appropriate experiences with stringent safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched features such as default screen time limits, Family Pairing, and additional privacy protections for minors,” the spokesperson said.
The lawsuit follows an investigation by the FTC that sought to discover whether the companies were complying with a settlement involving Musical.ly, TikTok’s predecessor that was bought by ByteDance.
The government sued Musical.ly in 2019 for the same reason it is now suing TikTok – alleged violations of children’s privacy protection laws.
Musical.ly agreed to pay $5.7 million to resolve the allegation, and the app – along with owner ByteDance – agreed to comply with COPPA. But the FTC said it found evidence that the companies are still not complying with the US protections.
The US government agencies are seeking civil penalties and an injunction. These penalties can reach more than $50,000 a day under the FTC Act.
The lawsuit comes just a few days after the Senate passed landmark online child safety legislation, sending two bills – COPPA 2.0 and the Kids Online Safety Act – toward an uncertain future in the House.
Senators pushed the bills forward at a time when the US has been slapping Chinese-owned TikTok with legal challenges.
Policymakers fear the app gives the Chinese government ability to access US data and surveil users. ByteDance, based in Singapore, has denied the government has any control over the app.
In April, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that forces ByteDance to sell the app or face a US ban. TikTok has called the bill “unconstitutional” and vowed to fight it in court.
