In a lawsuit filed last Friday, August 3, 2024, the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) alleged that TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media giant, has failed to stop children from joining the application and has unlawfully collected their personal data.
In the lawsuit, which was filed in a federal court in Southern California, the DOJ said TikTok’s practices amounted to a massive-scale invasion of child privacy, in defiance of laws that require online companies to obtain parental consent to gather information for those under the age of 13. In the filing, the U.S. accused TikTok of implementing deficient ways of screening for accounts created by children and obstructing parents when they tried to delete them. Those practices violated both the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a law that restricts the online tracking of children, and a 2019 agreement between TikTok and the U.S. government in which the company pledged to notify parents before collecting children’s data and to remove videos from users under 13 years old.
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