The United States filed a civil lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company on Friday, arguing the entities violated a federal law aimed at protecting the privacy and safety of children online.
The Justice Department filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California together with the Federal Trade Commission, setting up a legal clash between the Biden administration and the popular social media platform, which has also come under sharp scrutiny from lawmakers in Congress.
The lawsuit accuses TikTok and other entities of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and a federal regulation by creating accounts for kids and bringing in data from them “without first notifying their parents and obtaining verifiable parental consent.”
The lawsuit also says the defendants did not adhere to parental requests to delete their kids’ accounts and failed to get rid of the accounts “of users they know are children.”
Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin C. Mizer said in a news release the Justice Department is aiming to make sure that TikTok “honors its obligation to protect children’s privacy rights and parents’ efforts to protect their children.”
“The Department is deeply concerned that TikTok has continued to collect and retain children’s personal information despite a court order barring such conduct,” he said.
The Justice Department, in the news release, said the defendants engaged in the conduct even though they were subject to a court order that barred them from violating the federal law.
The lawsuit asks the court for a permanent injunction to stop future violations of the rule, along with asking for civil penalties for every violation of the rule.
Specifically, the federal lawsuit says the operators of TikTok knowingly permitted kids under 13 years old to create accounts “in the regular TikTok experience” and then “collected extensive personal information from those children without first providing parental notice or obtaining verifiable parental consent.”
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina M. Khan accused TikTok of repeatedly and knowingly violating the privacy of kids, “threatening the safety of millions of children across the country.”
“The FTC will continue to use the full scope of its authorities to protect children online — especially as firms deploy increasingly sophisticated digital tools to surveil kids and profit from their data,” she said in a news release.
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