Indiana sues TikTok for violating child safety and security

These lawsuits are the first filed by a US state against TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, in a sign of mounting legal pressure.

Indiana's attorney general on Wednesday sued Chinese app TikTok for misleading users about China's access to their data and exposing children to content mature, in the first state lawsuits against the popular video service.

Todd Rokita, the attorney general, claimed that TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, had violated state consumer protection laws by not disclosing the Chinese government's ability to exploit sensitive consumer information. His office said in a separate complaint that TikTok misled young users and their parents with its age rating of over 12 in Apple and Google's app stores, when in fact the content inappropriate sexual and substance-related can be easily found and pushed by the company. to children using the app.

U.S. Officials have been fighting for more than two years to either ban the hugely popular app or force it to change its ownership structure to reduce its affiliations with China. The app has been dragged into the Biden administration's efforts to bolster U.S. tech supply chains and slow China's rise as a global tech innovator and exporter.

Indiana is seeking penalties of up to $5,000 per violation and has asked a state superior court to order TikTok to stop false and misleading claims about its processing data and stop marketing itself as an appropriate app for young teens.

"TikTok is a wolf in sheep's clothing," the attorney general's office said .

TikTok declined to comment on the Indiana lawsuits, but spokeswoman Brooke Oberwetter said "the safety, privacy, and security of our community are our top priority".< /p>

"We build youth wellbeing into our policies, limit features based on age, give parents tools and resources, and continue to invest in new ways to enjoy content based on age –relevance or family convenience,” she added.

ImageIndiana Attorney General Todd Rokita says TikTok violated state consumer protection laws. distancing itself from ByteDance, which bought the app, then known as Musical.ly, in 2017 for more than $800 million.Since then, TikTok has been d become a phenomenon, with some estimates that the app has over 100 million users in the US and over 1 billion worldwide.

But its growing popularity and ties to China have drawn the attention of US officials and competitors like Meta, who have warned that TikTok's growing influence could undermine national interests and the strength of the US tech sector.

The Biden administration has been locked in negotiations with TikTok for months over national security concerns over the app's data collection and potential data transfers to China . Republicans and Democrats have called for the app to be banned. Several states have opened investigations into TikTok for breaches of privacy and national security, while Transportation Security A...