'TikTok app is a malicious and menacing threat': Indiana files first lawsuit against TikTok

Indiana's attorney general filed two lawsuits against TikTok on Wednesday, making it the first lawsuit against the social media company in a state — and escalating regulatory issues for the company.

NurPhoto / Contributor I Getty Images TikTok.

Attorney General Todd Rokita said in the lawsuits that the company provided inappropriate content to children and failed to adequately protect user data, according to CBS News.

TikTok has been under regulatory scrutiny (and political scare) since it crashed on US shores in 2018 (following its merger with Musical.ly) - the company was fined $5.7 million by the Federal Trade Commission in 2019 for collecting information about people under 13 without parental consent, per TechCrunch.

However, many of the ongoing issues have to do with the fact that TikTok is owned by China-based parent company ByteDance.

About 67% of teens ages 13-17 say they have used TikTok, according to the Pew Research Center.

Politicians have expressed concern that US user data could be accessed by the Chinese government, which has strict laws that require private companies to share virtually all user data with it. So far, TikTok has been banned on government phones in states like Maryland, South Carolina and South Dakota, according to CBS.

TikTok says its US user data is not processed in China and is routed through the US and Singapore. It is also in talks with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to continue operating in the country, although those negotiations have reportedly been delayed for national security reasons, unnamed sources told the Wall Street Journal . .

TikTok The Washington Post in an emailed statement that TikTok has features like age restrictions and parental controls, and that "youth welfare" makes part of the application rules.

"While we do not comment on ongoing litigation, the safety, privacy and security of our community is our top priority," the spokesperson told the outlet.

“We are also confident that we are on the right track in our negotiations with the U.S. government to fully satisfy all reasonable national security concerns of the United States, and we have already made significant progress in implementing of these solutions," the company spokesperson added.

Eight state attorneys general, including Kentucky and New Jersey, already launched an investigation into the platform in March into its impact on children. But that is a separate legal issue.

Rokita's data privacy lawsuit claims the platform provides user data to the Chinese government and that the company's claims that it is not stored in China are not true, according to the Post.

"As TikTok sucks up tons of highly sensitive and personal information about Indiana consumers, it deceives and misleads them about the risks the app routinely poses to their data," the lawsuit says. .

With respect to the issue of relevance, the other lawsuit cites a few examples that allege TikTok is providing users with inappropriate content, from Cardi B's "WAP" lyrics to the persistent practice of users lightly spelling the words. words to avoid content moderation - making it easy to find explicit content on the platform...