A Texas Attorney General is suing TikTok. The viral short video platform has allegedly violated a recently enacted child privacy law in the state.
Texas is suing TikTok because its existing parental control features are ‘insufficient’
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against TikTok. Paxton, and by extension the state of Texas, has alleged TikTok’s existing parental control features are insufficient.
Specifically speaking, TikTok doesn’t have adequate alert and control mechanisms to monitor or limit a minor using the platform, alleged Paxton,
“However, Defendants do not provide the parents or guardians of users known to be 13 to 17 years old with parental tools that allow them to control or limit most of a known minor’s privacy and account settings.”
Consequentially, this could potentially permit TikTok to harvest data of minors without the guardian’s knowledge, the lawsuit stated:
“For example, parents or guardians cannot control Defendants’ sharing, disclosing, and selling of a known minor’s personal identifying information, nor control Defendants’ ability to display targeted advertising to a known minor.”
Teens can deny their parents rights to monitor and control them on TikTok?
The lawsuit further claims that TikTok’s “Family Pairing” tool isn’t “commercially reasonable”. Texas seems to have an issue with the way TikTok has set up account creation and management platforms.
Specifically speaking, parents who wish to monitor and control their children’s accounts, must first have their own TikTok account. However, what’s even more concerning is that teens can easily deny their parents’ requests to set up the monitoring tool. In other words, parents must seek their minor’s permission via the app to monitor or manage their app usage.
TikTok has refuted these allegations. The platform doesn’t allow ads targeting users younger than 18. “We strongly disagree with these allegations and we offer robust safeguards for teens and parents, including family pairing, all of which are publicly available. We stand by the protections we provide families,” the ByteDance-owned social media platform stated.
Incidentally, TikTok is the first tech company to be dragged to court under the new child privacy law in the state. Parts of the law have been struck down by a federal judge, but the law is still in effect. It essentially mandates social media platforms to verify the ages of younger users and offer parental control features. Texas is reportedly suing TikTok over these prerequisites, claiming they are insufficient.
