Today, (Wednesday), Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird filed a lawsuit against TikTok, suing the social media app for deceiving Iowa parents by lying about children’s access to inappropriate content. Bird says, “TikTok has kept parents in the dark. 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.” In the Apple App Store, TikTok claims a 12+ age rating, and is able to work around parental controls by wrongfully rating the app. This violates The App Store guidelines by stating the content is “infrequent/mild” when it is actually “frequent/intense”. The platform is also accused of recommending inappropriate content to children as young as 13 years old. Bird says “TikTok has sneaked past parental blocks by misrepresenting the severity of its content. But no longer. As a mom and prosecutor, I am committed to equipping parents with information to keep their kids safe and hold TikTok accountable.” This deception violates the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, and the lawsuit is hoping to inform misleading parents and users about the inappropriate content availability, and challenge TikTok’s misleading statements about parental controls on the platform’s Community Guidelines and in the Google and Microsoft app stores.
