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] The court approved the settlement in July 2022. [11]

Inappropriate content for minors

In December 2022, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filed two separate lawsuits against TikTok in the Allen County Superior Court in Fort Wayne, Indiana. [12] The first complaint alleged that the platform exposed inappropriate content to minors, and 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. [12] [13] The second complaint alleged TikTok does not disclose the Chinese government's potential to access sensitive consumer information. [12] [13] The two lawsuits were later consolidated and dismissed. [14] In dismissing the lawsuit in November 2023, the Superior Court cited that the court “lacks personal jurisdiction” over TikTok. [14]

In March 2024, the Italian Competition Authority fined TikTok €10 million ($11 million) for failing to prevent the spread of harmful content, including the "French scar" challenge, where users pinched their cheeks to create lasting bruises, endangering minors' safety. [15]

In June 2024,  Utah Attorney General sued TikTok in state court, accusing its livestreaming feature of enabling the sexual exploitation of children. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok Live operates like a "virtual strip club," where adults may encourage minors to perform illicit acts in exchange for monetary gifts. While TikTok does not allow users under the age of 18 to host livestreams, the lawsuit criticizes TikTok's inadequate age verification and enforcement measures, claiming they fail to ensure user safety. [16] In January 2025, Utah further alleged TikTok knowingly allows the exploitation, prioritizing profits over user safety. [17] [18]

In November 2024, a group of French families sued TikTok over exposing adolescents to harmful content, leading two to take their lives. [19] The families alleged TikTok's algorithm exposed the children to content promoting self-harm, eating disorders and suicide. [20]

In November 2024, Venezuelan families and organizations filed an appeal for protection with Venezuela's Supreme Court concerning the impact of unregulated content on TikTok. Following a hearing, the court fined TikTok $10 million on December 30, 2024, over viral video challenges that authorities say led to the deaths of three children. The court cited TikTok's negligence in failing to implement "necessary and adequate measures" to prevent the viral challenge. [21] [22] [23]

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 had taken up a contract with the Chinese government-run Institute of Acoustics narrating English for translations but says she never agreed for her voice to be used in other ways. [24] The voice used in the feature was subsequently changed. [25]

Collecting children's data

In June 2021, the Netherlands-based Market Information Research Foundation (SOMI) filed a €1.4 billion lawsuit with an Amsterdam court on behalf of Dutch parents against TikTok, alleging that the app gathers data on children without adequate permission. [26] In interlocutory judgments issued in October 2023 and January 2024, the Amsterdam District Court allowed the claims of SOMI to proceed, along with those of the Foundation Take Back Your Privacy and the Foundation Mass Damage & Consumer. [27]

On August 2, 2024, the US Department of Justice sued TikTok for allegedly violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). [28] In October 2024, Texas sued TikTok, accusing it of violating state law by sharing children's personal identifying information without consent from their parents or legal guardians. [29] The same month, thirteen states and District of Columbia filed lawsuits against TikTok over mental health concerns involving minors. [30] One of the lawsuits, filed by the Attorney General of Kentucky, stated that TikTok developed an internal strategy to influence U.S. senator Mitch McConnell and other politicians. [31]

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. [32] 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. [33]

In May 2022, Tawainna Anderson, the mother of a 10-year-old girl from Pennsylvania, filed a lawsuit against TikTok in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. [34] Her daughter died while attempting the Blackout Challenge on TikTok. [35] The District Court dismissed the complaint in October 2022 and held that the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230, immunizes TikTok. [35] [34] On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed and remanded the case to the lower court in August 2024, holding that Section 230 only immunizes information provided by third parties and not recommendations made by TikTok's algorithm. [36] [37]

According to The Independent, the Blackout Challenge reportedly was linked to the deaths of 20 children between 2021 and 2022, 15 of whom were under the age of 12. [38]

Discrimination

In February 2024, Katie Puris, 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. [39] Prior to this lawsuit, she had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against the company in May 2023, alleging discrimination and retaliation. [39]

In August 2024, Olivia Anton Altamirano, a TikTok UK content moderator, sued the social media platform and its parent company, ByteDance Ltd., in the London employment tribunal, alleging disability discrimination and a toxic workplace culture that caused her stress and pregnancy complications. [40] TikTok denied the allegations. After a hearing, a UK judge allowed the case to proceed. [40]

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. [41]

In January 2025, a group of French families sued TikTok France for allegedly failing to protect children from content promoting suicide methods. [42]

TikTok v. Garland

TikTok, Inc. v. Garland, 604 U.S. ___ (2025), was a United States Supreme Court case brought by ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok on the constitutionality of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) based on the Freedom of Speech Clause of the First Amendment, the Bill of Attainder Clause of Article One, Section Nine, and the Due Process Clause and Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. [43] [44] [45] The case was consolidated with Firebaugh v. Garland, a lawsuit filed by TikTok content creators against the law. [46] [47]

Citing national security concerns, the U.S. Congress in April 2024 passed PAFACA which prohibits the hosting and distribution of apps determined by the President to present a significant national security threat if they are made by social media companies owned by foreign nationals or parent companies from countries designated as U.S. foreign adversaries, unless such companies are divested from the foreign entities. The law specifically named Chinese company ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok as "foreign adversary controlled". The deadline for their divestment was January 19, 2025. [48] [49]

ByteDance sued the federal government following passage of PAFACA, asserting the law violated the First and Fifth Amendments. A panel of judges from the U.S. District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the company's claims about the constitutionality of the law in December 2024 [50] [51] [52] and declined to grant a temporary injunction, while ByteDance sought an appeal from the Supreme Court. [53] [54]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tencent</span> Chinese conglomerate holding company

Tencent Holdings Ltd. is a Chinese multinational technology conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the world's largest company in the video game industry based on its equity investments.

WeChat or Weixin in Chinese ; lit. 'micro-message') is a Chinese instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018 with over 1 billion monthly active users. WeChat has been described as China's "app for everything" and a super-app because of its wide range of functions. WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, mobile payment, sharing of photographs and videos and location sharing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ByteDance</span> Chinese Internet technology company

ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xiaohongshu</span> Chinese social media and e-commerce platform

Xiaohongshu, officially known in English as rednote, is a Chinese social networking and e-commerce platform.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TikTok</span> Video-focused social media platform

TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin, is a short-form video-hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. It can be accessed both through a mobile app or through its website.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zhang Yiming</span> Chinese internet entrepreneur (born 1983)

Zhang Yiming is a Chinese Internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012, developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform Douyin. Zhang is one of the richest individuals in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$45.6 billion as of October 2024, according to Forbes and US$43.1 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. On 4 November 2021, Zhang stepped down as CEO of ByteDance, completing a leadership handover announced in May 2021. According to Reuters, Zhang maintains over 50 percent of ByteDance's voting rights. The surging global popularity of TikTok made Zhang the richest man in China in 2024.

Shanghai Moonton Technology Co. Ltd., commonly known as Moonton, is a Chinese multinational video game developer and publisher owned by the Nuverse subsidiary of ByteDance and based in Shanghai, China. It is best known for the mobile multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang released in July 2016.

Zynn was a Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by Kuaishou, a Beijing-based internet technology company established in 2011 by Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao. It was used to create and share short videos, and it pays its users for using the app and referring others. Zynn was launched on May 7, 2020. It became the most-downloaded app in the App Store in the same month. It has also been criticized for being a "pyramid scheme", and it has faced accusations of plagiarism and stealing content. Aside from Zynn in North America, Kuaishou is available under the name Kwai in Russia, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, America, India, and the Middle East. Kwai used to be available in Australia and the United States on the App Store, but was removed at an unknown date. Zynn was permanently shut down on the 20th of August, 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Triller (app)</span> American social networking service

Triller is an American video-sharing social networking service that was first released for iOS and Android in 2015. The service allows users to create and share short-form videos, including videos set to, or automatically synchronized to, music using artificial intelligence technology. It initially operated as a video editing app before adding social networking features.

<i>U.S. WeChat Users Alliance v. Trump</i> Lawsuit between U.S. WeChat Users Alliance and President Donald J. Trump

U.S. WeChat Users Alliance (USWUA) v. Trump was a court case pending before the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. The plaintiffs won a preliminary injunction on September 20, 2020, blocking the Trump administration's ban order against WeChat based on concerns raised about harm to First Amendment rights and the hardships imposed on a minority community using the app as a primary means of communication. The lawsuit was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.

<i>TikTok v. Trump</i> Lawsuit between TikTok and Donald Trump

TikTok v. Trump was a lawsuit before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia filed in September 2020 by TikTok as a challenge to President Donald Trump's executive order of August 6, 2020. The order prohibited the usage of TikTok in five stages, the first being the prohibition of downloading the application. On September 27, 2020, a preliminary injunction was issued by Judge Carl J. Nichols blocking enforcement of that executive order. The lawsuit, by then captioned TikTok v. Biden, was dismissed in July 2021, following the Biden Administration's rescission of the executive order.

<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 short-form video-hosting service 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 are also free speech concerns about TikTok ban.

In 2020, the United States government announced that it was considering banning the Chinese social media platform TikTok upon a request from Donald Trump, the president of the United States, who viewed the app as a national security threat. The result was that the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance—which initially planned on selling a small portion of TikTok to an American company—agreed to divest TikTok to prevent a ban in the United States and in other countries where restrictions are also being considered due to privacy concerns, which themselves are mostly related to its ownership by a firm based in China.

NetChoice is a trade association of online businesses that advocates for free expression and free enterprise on the internet. It currently has six active First Amendment lawsuits over state-level internet regulations, including NetChoice v. Paxton, Moody v. NetChoice, NetChoice v. Bonta and NetChoice v. Yost.

CapCut, known in China as JianYing and formerly internationally as ViaMaker, is a Chinese short-form video editing app developed by ByteDance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Restrictions on TikTok in the United States</span> Federal-government-imposed ban

The short-form video-hosting service TikTok has been under a de jure nationwide ban in the United States since January 19, 2025, due to the US government's concerns over potential user data collection and influence operations by the government of the People's Republic of China. The ban took effect after ByteDance, the China-based parent company of TikTok, refused to sell the service before the deadline of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act. Prior to the ban, individual states, cities, universities, and government-affiliated devices had restricted TikTok.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act</span> United States legislation

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) is an act of Congress that was signed into law on April 24, 2024, as part of Public Law 118-50. It would ban social networking services within 270 days if they are determined by the president of the United States and relevant provisions to be a "foreign adversary controlled application", with a possible extension of up to 90 days to be granted by the president; the definition covers websites and application software, including mobile apps. The act explicitly applies to ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries—including TikTok—without the need for additional determination, with the company to become compliant by January 19, 2025. It ceases to be applicable if the foreign adversary controlled application is divested and no longer considered to be controlled by a foreign adversary of the United States.

TikTok, Inc. v. Garland, 604 U.S. ___ (2025), was a United States Supreme Court case brought by ByteDance Ltd. and TikTok on the constitutionality of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) based on the Freedom of Speech Clause of the First Amendment, the Bill of Attainder Clause of Article One, Section Nine, and the Due Process Clause and Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The case was consolidated with Firebaugh v. Garland, a lawsuit filed by TikTok content creators against the law.

<i>Anderson v. TikTok</i> 2024 United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals case

Anderson v. TikTok, 2:22-cv-01849,, is a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in which the court held that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), 47 U.S.C. § 230, does not bar claims against TikTok, a video-sharing social media platform, regarding TikTok's recommendations to users via its algorithm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SCOPE Act</span>

HB 18 also known as Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment Act or just The SCOPE Act is an American law in Texas. The law requires internet platforms to verify the age of a parent or guardian of accounts if they are signed in as under 18. It also requires parental consent before collecting the data on minors under 18 years of age. Which is an increase from the age set at the federal level under COPPA which is 13. It also requires platforms to block and filter if the content promotes suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, substance abuse, stalking, bullying, or harassment, or grooming.

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