The lawsuit was filed by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, accusing them of breaking the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The complaint which was filed in collaboration with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claims that TikTok has been collecting personal data from children below 13 years without getting consent from their parents.
According to the DOJ, TikTok deliberately allowed minors to create ordinary accounts thereby enabling them to share videos and messages with adults and other people while collecting their personal information without permission. The government says millions of American children below 13-years-old have been using TikTok for a long time, during which period it retained most of their personal data.
FTC Chair Lina Khan said “TikTok knew what it was doing through these repeated violations against kids’ privacy putting at risk millions of young ones within our borders.” If found guilty, it may result in penalties running up into billions of dollars since FTC is pursuing amounts as high as $51,744 for each infraction committed daily.
TikTok has responded to this lawsuit saying that those days are gone; thus there should be no reason for continuing lawsuits since today’s policies protect minors’ right to privacy as stipulated under COPPA law.
A TikTok spokesperson said, “We disagree with these accusations, a lot of which concern ancient occurrences and customs that are not true or have been dealt with.”
The legal action intends to terminate TikTok’s so-called “large-scale encroachments on kids’ privacy” and demand accountability from the company. It raises alarms about information confidentiality and safeguarding minors’ private details on the internet.
