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The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company ByteDance for violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
“According to the complaint, from 2019 to the present, TikTok knowingly permitted children to create regular TikTok accounts and to create, view, and share short-form videos and messages with adults and others on the regular TikTok platform,” the Justice Department wrote in a press release.
“The defendants collected and retained a wide variety of personal information from these children without notifying or obtaining consent from their parents. Even for accounts that were created in ‘Kids Mode’ (a pared-back version of TikTok intended for children under 13), the defendants unlawfully collected and retained children’s email addresses and other types of personal information.
“Further, when parents discovered their children’s accounts and asked the defendants to delete the accounts and information in them, the defendants frequently failed to honor those requests.
“The defendants also had deficient and ineffectual internal policies and processes for identifying and deleting TikTok accounts created by children.
“The defendants engaged in the above-described conduct despite being subject to a court order barring them from violating COPPA and imposing measures designed to ensure their compliance.”
This is just the latest salvo fired by the United States government in its attempt to punish the ultra-popular Chinese social media app.
In March, the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act that could force ByteDance to sell TikTok or face the social media app being banned in the United States.
The stated concern over TikTok is that it is considered by some in government to be a threat to national security.
In April, President Joe Biden signed a bill to ban TikTok in America (while at the same time, his re-election campaign said it will continue to use the social media app).
The bill Biden signed gave ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok or the app will be banned in the United States.
In response, ByteDance filed a petition for review that asserts the bill is unconstitutional and that there is no way way, “not commercially, not technologically, not legally,” for ByteDance to find a buyer for TikTok.