TikTok Isn’t Keeping Its Promises To Better Protect Kids, Critic Groups Say

TikTok hasn’t lived up to its agreement with the FTC to better protect children using its app, a group of 20 advocacy groups say.

The coalition led by the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood identified a number of alleged problems, including issues with TikTok verifying user’s ages, in a new FTC complaint. The app is “ensnaring perhaps millions of underage children in its marketing apparatus, and putting children at risk of sexual predation,” Josh Grolin, the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood’s executive director, told the New York Times
NYT
. “Now, even after being caught red-handed by the FTC, TikTok continues to flout the law.”

A year ago, regulators saddled with TikTok a record $5.7 million fine for violating the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. To settle the investigation, TikTok said it would delete videos from any users it knew was younger than 13 and remove any videos from users whose ages weren’t known. (The critic groups say TikTok hasn’t full scrubbed its app of these types of videos.) In addition, it agreed to collect parent’s permission before taking a child’s personal information. The problems stretch back to when TikTok’s predecessor company, Muiscal.ly.

TikTok is one of the most popular apps in the world and has nearly 800 million monthly users. It was the most downloaded app in the first quarter, as millions of new users flooded onto it during worldwide lockdown.