'Suggestive Content' Accessible by Teens on TikTok, Says Indiana Suit

Drug-related content, sexual and suggestive content, and profanity are “rampant” on TikTok and serve a “steady stream” of inappropriate content to users as young as 13, said an Indiana attorney general’s office memorandum (docket 02D02-2212-PL-000400) in support of its motion for a preliminary injunction against the social media platform. The memo was filed Wednesday at the Indiana Superior Court of Allen County.

Indiana filed two lawsuits against TikTok Wednesday (see Ref:2212070069]) seeking injunctive relief and civil penalties. The first complaint claims TikTok lured children with misleading representations it had appropriate content, the AG’s office said. Children can search for and find “thousands upon thousands” of videos containing videos with drugs, sexual and "suggestive content and profanity,” and TikTok “even helps users locate this content by suggesting search terms” using its autocomplete function, it said, giving cannabis, cocaine and “shroomz” as examples.

A parent could read that the TikTok app is rated 12+ in the Apple Store, indicating it has “infrequent/mild” content related to alcohol, drugs, sexual and mature themes, and crude humor, said the memorandum, but a 13-year-old could access content with “sexual kinks and fetishes,” “near-naked pole dancing routines from both men and women” and music with lyrics that include “fuck” and “bitch.”

Young Americans spend an average 99 minutes a day watching TikTok, it said. Indiana will present expert testimony showing that of 194 videos viewed for identified topics, 38% contained substance use, 27% were instructional videos on substance use, and a quarter showed substance use in a positive way, it said. The videos had millions, and some billions, of views, and many were visible when logging into TikTok using account credentials of a 13-year-old, it said.

Yet, TikTok parent ByteDance operates a parallel app in China called Douyin, “which contains many more safeguards for its young users,” said the complaint. Children under 14 have to use real-name authentication on the platform and are required to use “youth mode” that “does not contain or promote the kind of salacious content that TikTok makes available to 13-year-olds in the U.S.," it said. Chinese “youth mode” limits daily use to 40 minutes, 6 a.m.-10 a.m., it said.

In the second complaint, Indiana alleged that the more TikTok videos users view and share, the more the Chinese tech company learns about them, including their interests, locations, phone types and apps, their contacts and facial features, voice prints “and even ‘where your eyes are looking on your phone.’”

TikTok is owned by a Chinese company that’s “subject to Chinese law,” including those that “mandate secret cooperation with China’s intelligence activities,” the complaint said. The Chinese government and Communist Party have demonstrated interest in the kind of data that TikTok collects on its users, “which they can use to spy on, blackmail, and coerce those users, or to further develop China’s artificial intelligence capabilities” or for other purposes, it alleged.

TikTok “misleads” Indiana consumers by failing to disclose in its privacy policy or on its pages at the Apple Store and Google Play store that parent company ByteDance is located in China and that their data could be shared “subject to Chinese laws,” the complaint said. “TikTok is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” it said.