Lawsuits involving TikTok

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TikTok has been involved in a number of lawsuits since its founding, with a number of them relating to TikTok's data collection techniques.

Contents

Tencent lawsuits

Tencent's WeChat platform has been accused of blocking Douyin's videos. [1] [2] In April 2018, Douyin sued Tencent and accused it of spreading false and damaging information on its WeChat platform, demanding CN¥1 million in compensation and an apology. In June 2018, Tencent filed a lawsuit against Toutiao and Douyin in a Beijing court, alleging they had repeatedly defamed Tencent with negative news and damaged its reputation, seeking a nominal sum of CN¥1 in compensation and a public apology. [3] In response, Toutiao filed a complaint the following day against Tencent for allegedly unfair competition and asking for CN¥90 million in economic losses. [4]

Data transfer class action lawsuit

In November 2019, a class action lawsuit was filed in California that alleged that TikTok transferred personally identifiable information of U.S. persons to servers located in China owned by Tencent and Alibaba. [5] [6] [7] The lawsuit also accused ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, of taking user content without their permission. The plaintiff of the lawsuit, college student Misty Hong, downloaded the app but said she never created an account. She realized a few months later that TikTok had created an account for her using her information (such as biometrics) and made a summary of her information. The lawsuit also alleged that information was sent to Chinese tech giant Baidu. [8] In July 2020, twenty lawsuits against TikTok were merged into a single class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. [9] In February 2021, TikTok agreed to pay $92 million to settle the class action lawsuit. [10]

Inappropriate content for minors

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filed lawsuits against TikTok, alleging that the platform exposed inappropriate content to minors. The complaint also alleges that TikTok "intentionally falsely reports the frequency of sexual content, nudity, and mature/suggestive themes" on their platform which made the app's "12-plus" age ratings on the Apple and Google app stores deceptive. [11] [12]

Voice actor lawsuit

In May 2021, Canadian voice actor Bev Standing filed a lawsuit against TikTok over the use of her voice in the text-to-speech feature without her permission. The lawsuit was filed in the Southern District of New York. TikTok declined to comment. Standing believes that TikTok used recordings she made for the Chinese government-run Institute of Acoustics. [13] The voice used in the feature was subsequently changed. [14]

Collecting children's data

In June 2021, the Netherlands-based Market Information Research Foundation (SOMI) filed a €1.4 billion lawsuit on behalf of Dutch parents against TikTok, alleging that the app gathers data on children without adequate permission. [15]

Blackout Challenge

Multiple lawsuits have been filed against TikTok, accusing the platform of hosting content that led to the death of at least seven children. [16] The lawsuits claim that children died after attempting the "Blackout challenge", a TikTok trend that involves strangling or asphyxiating someone or themselves until they black out (passing out). TikTok stated that search queries for the challenge do not show any results, linking instead to protective resources, while the parents of two of the deceased argued that the content showed up on their children's TikTok feeds, without them searching for it. [17]

Discrimination

In September 2023, two former ByteDance employees filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) asking the EEOC to investigate TikTok's practice of retaliation against workers who complain about discrimination. [18]

In February 2024, a former senior executive at TikTok filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against the company, alleging discrimination based on age and gender. [19] Prior to this lawsuit, she had filed a complaint with the EEOC against the company in May 2023, alleging discrimination and retaliation. [19]

Mental health of minors

In May 2024, the Nebraska Attorney General filed a lawsuit against TikTok for allegedly harming minors' mental health through an algorithm designed to be cultivate compulsive behavior. [20]

See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Censorship of TikTok</span> Restriction of access to TikTok by governments and organizations

Many countries have imposed past or ongoing restrictions on the video sharing social network TikTok. Bans from government devices usually stem from national security concerns over potential access of data by the Chinese government. Other bans have cited children's well-being and offensive content such as pornography.

There is evidence that TikTok has down-weighted the posts of topics deemed sensitive by the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party. Topics alleged to have been censored by the platform include the Persecution of Uyghurs in China, the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests, the Sino-Indian border dispute, foreign political leaders, LGBTQ+ people, disabled people, and people of African descent. TikTok has also removed or omitted information from its services to comply with company policies, legal demands, and government censorship laws. A 2024 report found significant disparity between Tiktok and Instagram in relation to the ratio of hashtags on topics deemed sensitve to the Chinese government's interests. TikTok's responses to claims of censorship have varied, responding that the platform was attempting to protect users from bullying, arguing that certain instances were the result of human error, and stating that such incidents were the result of algorithmic mistakes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Trump–TikTok controversy</span> 2020–2021 event

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In April 2024, US president Joe Biden signed into law the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which is an effective ban or forced sale of TikTok from its parent company ByteDance. The video-sharing platform had sparked concerns over potential user data collection and influence operations by the Chinese government. Previous efforts by the Trump administration to ban the app or force its sale were stopped by the courts and the Biden administration.

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References

  1. ↑ "Tencent and Toutiao come out swinging at each other". Archived from the original on 24 May 2021. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  2. ↑ "Tencent sues Toutiao for alleged defamation, demands 1 yuan and apology". Today . Archived from the original on 11 October 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  3. ↑ Jiang, Sijia (1 June 2018). "Tencent sues Toutiao for alleged defamation, demands 1 yuan and apology". Reuters. Archived from the original on 11 October 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  4. ↑ Yijun, Yin (4 June 2018). "Tencent and ByteDance Take Ongoing Feud to Court". Sixth Tone . Archived from the original on 25 November 2020. Retrieved 10 October 2020.
  5. ↑ "TikTok sent user data to China, US lawsuit claims". BBC News. 3 December 2019. Archived from the original on 5 December 2019. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
  6. ↑ Montgomery, Blake (2 December 2019). "California Class-Action Lawsuit Accuses TikTok of Illegally Harvesting Data and Sending It to China". The Daily Beast . Archived from the original on 3 December 2019. Retrieved 4 December 2019.
  7. ↑ Chen, Angela (5 December 2019). "TikTok's second lawsuit in a week brings a US ban a shade closer". MIT Technology Review . Archived from the original on 22 August 2020. Retrieved 5 December 2019.
  8. ↑ Narendra, Meera (4 December 2019). "#Privacy: TikTok found secretly transferring user data to China". Archived from the original on 22 August 2020. Retrieved 25 May 2020.
  9. ↑ Allyn, Bobby (4 August 2020). "Class-Action Lawsuit Claims TikTok Steals Kids' Data And Sends It To China". NPR. Archived from the original on 22 August 2020. Retrieved 4 August 2020.
  10. ↑ Allyn, Bobby (25 February 2021). "TikTok To Pay $92 Million To Settle Class-Action Suit Over 'Theft' Of Personal Data". NPR. Archived from the original on 26 February 2021. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
  11. ↑ McDaniel, Justine. "Indiana sues TikTok, claiming it exposes children to harmful content". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 18 December 2022. Retrieved 17 December 2022.
  12. ↑ "TikTok sued by Indiana over security and safety concerns". BBC News. 8 December 2022. Archived from the original on 11 October 2023. Retrieved 15 March 2024.
  13. ↑ Dunne, James (12 May 2021). "Why a Canadian actor is suing social media giant TikTok's parent company". CBC News. Archived from the original on 13 May 2021. Retrieved 13 May 2021.
  14. ↑ Kastrenakes, Jacob (25 May 2021). "TikTok changes text-to-speech voice after voice actor sues". The Verge. Archived from the original on 7 August 2022. Retrieved 7 August 2022.
  15. ↑ Culatto, John (2 June 2021). "Dutch parents sue TikTok for €1.4 billion". Deutsche Welle. Archived from the original on 4 June 2021. Retrieved 10 June 2021.
  16. ↑ Carville, Olivia (30 November 2022). "TikTok's Viral Challenges Keep Luring Young Kids to Their Deaths". Bloomberg Businessweek . Archived from the original on 30 November 2022. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
  17. ↑ Clark, Mitchell (7 July 2022). "The TikTok 'blackout challenge' has now allegedly killed seven kids". The Verge. Archived from the original on 8 July 2022. Retrieved 8 July 2022.
  18. ↑ "Black creators built TikTok. But Black employees say they experienced 'toxicity and racism'". CNN. September 21, 2023. Archived from the original on March 15, 2024. Retrieved February 10, 2024.
  19. 1 2 "Former TikTok executive sues the company for alleged gender and age discrimination". CNN. February 9, 2024. Archived from the original on March 15, 2024. Retrieved February 10, 2024.
  20. ↑ Avila, Joseph De (May 22, 2024). "Nebraska Sues TikTok for Allegedly Harming Minors" . The Wall Street Journal . Archived from the original on 2024-05-22. Retrieved 2024-05-23.
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