Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird announced a lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company Byte Dance on Wednesday, alleging the app is lying to parents about the access it provides children to “inappropriate content” in violation of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act.
A lawsuit from Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird alleges the app and its parent company are ... [+]
The lawsuit argues TikTok “represents to Iowa parents and Iowa children that inappropriate content on its platform, including drugs, nudity, alcohol, and profanity, is ‘infrequent,’” but says in reality it is full of “easily accessible” X-rated content.
The lawsuit said Iowa performed its own investigation that found users who registered for the app as 13-year-olds could “readily find” recipes for “highly alcoholic drinks,” women dancing provocatively, videos promoting self-harm and more.
Bird also said in the suit that TikTok “wrongfully rat(ed) its app ‘12+’” and violated App Store guidelines by misleading how frequent “harmful content” appears.
The state is seeking an injunction “to compel TikTok to cease its deceptive, misleading, false and unfair statements and conduct” related to the content being served to kids, along with a request for “civil penalties, disgorgement, and other costs and fees” and a $40,000 fine per violation.
Forbes has reached out to TikTok for comment on the lawsuit.
“TikTok has kept parents in the dark,” Bird said in a press release. “It’s time we shine a light on TikTok for exposing young children to graphic materials such as sexual content, self-harm, illegal drug use, and worse.”
TikTok has faced other lawsuits by state attorneys general in Utah (where the attorney general claimed the platform “illegally baits children” into addictive and unsafe use), Indiana and Arkansas, which made similar claims. Arkansas’ language was quite similar to Iowa’s, alleging the app and its parent company—along with Facebook and Instagram—deceived users and promoted explicit content, and it also alleged the apps provided “false, deceptive and misleading” claims that user data is not shared with Beijing. Last year, Montana became the first U.S. state to approve a complete ban when its Republican governor signed a law prohibiting anyone from downloading the app and seeking to prevent app stores from offering it. The law was blocked, however, one month before it was set to go into effect after a federal judge deemed it unconstitutional.