Washington — The Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company ByteDance on Friday, alleging that the social media platform broke the law by collecting data on its young users.
In the suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the Justice Department alleged TikTok violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, as well as a 2019 agreement between TikTok and the Federal Trade Commission over its practices toward children.
The lawsuit, which stems from an FTC investigation, alleges that TikTok knowingly permitted children to create accounts and interact with adults on the platform since 2019. The company collected and retained personal information from the children without notifying or obtaining consent from their parents, the suit said.
"For years, defendants have knowingly allowed children under 13 to create and use TikTok accounts without their parents' knowledge or consent, have collected extensive data from those children, and have failed to comply with parents' requests to delete their children's accounts and personal information," the 31-page civil lawsuit said.
It added that TikTok "adopted and implemented inadequate and ineffective policies to stop children from creating general TikTok accounts and to remove those accounts when they were discovered."
TikTok offers a "Kids Mode" for users who say they're under 13. The version limits their interactions on the platform, including restricting messages with other users and the ability to create and upload videos. But the company does not notify parents or obtain consent for the restricted accounts, the suit said. The platform also allows users to easily bypass the age restrictions when creating their accounts, the Justice Department alleged.
TikTok is also collecting information on children with restricted accounts, including "app activity data, device information, mobile carrier information, and app information — which they combine with persistent identifiers and use to amass profiles on children," according the department.
TikTok moderators spent only spent an average of five to seven seconds reviewing whether profiles belonged to a child, the filing added.
"As a result, for years millions of American children under 13 have been using TikTok and defendants have been collecting and retaining children's personal information," the suit said.
The department alleged TikTok shared information it collected from the restricted accounts with third parties and failed to notify parents.
The government asked the court for a permanent injunction against future violations of the child privacy law, civil penalties for past violations and "any additional relief as the Court determines to be just and proper."
In a statement, a TikTok spokesperson said the platform offers "age-appropriate experiences with stringent safeguards" and it "proactively" removes users it suspects to be underage.
"We disagree with these allegations, many of which relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed," TikTok said in a statement.
The lawsuit is the latest escalation between the U.S. government and TikTok, which has more than 170 million users in the U.S. Earlier this year, President Biden signed a bipartisan bill into law that forces TikTok's China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell its stake in TikTok or face a ban in the U.S. TikTok has challenged that law in federal court.