TikTok Execs Know About App's Effect On Teens, Lawsuit Documents Allege (npr.org) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR : For the first time, internal TikTok communications have been made public that show a company unconcerned with the harms the app poses for American teenagers. This is despite its own research validating many child safety concerns. The confidential material was part of a more than two-year investigation into TikTok by 14 attorneys general that led to state officials suing the company on Tuesday. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok was designed with the express intention of addicting young people to the app. The states argue the multi-billion-dollar company deceived the public about the risks. In each of the separate lawsuits state regulators filed, dozens of internal communications, documents and research data were redacted -- blacked-out from public view -- since authorities entered into confidentiality agreements with TikTok.
But in one of the lawsuits, filed by the Kentucky Attorney General's Office, the redactions were faulty. This was revealed when Kentucky Public Radio copied-and-pasted excerpts of the redacted material, bringing to light some 30 pages of documents that had been kept secret. A group of more than a dozen states sued TikTok on Tuesday, alleging the app was intentionally designed to addict teens, something authorities say is a violation of state consumer protection laws. After Kentucky Public Radio published excerpts of the redacted material, a state judge sealed the entire complaint following a request from the attorney general's office "to ensure that any settlement documents and related information, confidential commercial and trade secret information, and other protected information was not improperly disseminated," according to an emergency motion to seal the complaint filed on Wednesday by Kentucky officials.
NPR reviewed all the portions of the suit that were redacted, which highlight TikTok executives speaking candidly about a host of dangers for children on the wildly popular video app. The material, mostly summaries of internal studies and communications, show some remedial measures -- like time-management tools -- would have a negligible reduction in screen time. The company went ahead and decided to release and tout the features. Separately, under a new law, TikTok has until January to divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban. TikTok is fighting the looming crackdown. Meanwhile, the new lawsuits from state authorities have cast scrutiny on the app and its ability to counter content that harms minors.
But in one of the lawsuits, filed by the Kentucky Attorney General's Office, the redactions were faulty. This was revealed when Kentucky Public Radio copied-and-pasted excerpts of the redacted material, bringing to light some 30 pages of documents that had been kept secret. A group of more than a dozen states sued TikTok on Tuesday, alleging the app was intentionally designed to addict teens, something authorities say is a violation of state consumer protection laws. After Kentucky Public Radio published excerpts of the redacted material, a state judge sealed the entire complaint following a request from the attorney general's office "to ensure that any settlement documents and related information, confidential commercial and trade secret information, and other protected information was not improperly disseminated," according to an emergency motion to seal the complaint filed on Wednesday by Kentucky officials.
NPR reviewed all the portions of the suit that were redacted, which highlight TikTok executives speaking candidly about a host of dangers for children on the wildly popular video app. The material, mostly summaries of internal studies and communications, show some remedial measures -- like time-management tools -- would have a negligible reduction in screen time. The company went ahead and decided to release and tout the features. Separately, under a new law, TikTok has until January to divest from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or face a nationwide ban. TikTok is fighting the looming crackdown. Meanwhile, the new lawsuits from state authorities have cast scrutiny on the app and its ability to counter content that harms minors.
Other than being caught outright... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Other than being caught outright... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Other than being caught outright... (Score:4, Interesting)
I recall there being internal messages at Facebook to the effect of targeting kids as well. They just haven't achieved the same market penetration.
I'm not sure these sites manipulating older people is any better either. But addressing that would require the politicians (and people reading this post) to confront the uncomfortable idea that "They're manipulating me too". So that won't happen.
A smaller part of it has to do with the foreign ownership of Tik Tok. Only American garbage is allowed.
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In what way is X's algorithm transparent?
I don't know about transparent, but it's pretty good at showing me a bunch of shit I have no interest in, which limits the amount of engagement I'm willing to have with the app. Facebook has been like that lately, too. I think if I was a teenager who desired to bury my nose in my phone to escape reality, I probably wouldn't want to use either of those networks for prolonged periods.
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If you think age has something to do with, you are delusional.
TikTok is "the better facebook", hence the lobbies to kill it.
Seems odd to you that people actually use both.
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There's an election...
China bad, America good.
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It's not anything unique. There's always been criticisms made against things that seem to be too appealing to young folks. For my generation, it was MTV and video games. Eventually, the young folks grow up and start to hate the new scary things that their kids are into, and the cycle continues.
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Yeah so what? (Score:2)
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I've got surge protectors and smoke detectors older than TikTok.
Sounds like it's time to replace 'em. Both of those things have limited lifespans.
Conspiracies (Score:5, Interesting)
I just wanted to point something out and let you do the thinking.
So we know TikTok is widely used by teenagers. These teenagers often sport a woke mindset, and have been seen to be anti-America and pro-communism or pro-socialism. Really just pro-something new. TikTok isn't the first app that has been divested that China owned. Grindr was.
Grindr has, from the start, been used for drugs, sex, and other ways that are disrupting to the "family." It also targeted a minority, and predates the "woke" popularity (woke being promoting sexual orientation in school, transitioning of trans youth, etc.).
With the knowledge from this article, it seems that all of this coincides with ways to destabilize the American population. Now here is where it gets interesting. Chinese history tells us that the Mao dynasty ushered in communism by starting a revolution among minority groups, similar to what is going on here. TikTok is a platform for that revolution, with many youth being pro-Gaza and against Israel, one of our allies. Gen Z is a minority group, and vocal. So are LGBTQI+, they're vocal.
The ability to create an app to facilitate change is not new. Netflix changed the entire ecosystem to streaming, eventually. Napster forced record labels to offer their music as MP3s without DRM. Change has occurred from apps for a long time. So do you think that China, given the revelations about TikTok, is doing this on purpose?
Re: Conspiracies (Score:2)
You're wrong about the content on douyin in China. It is not all healthy like you describe. I see no sign of anything significant curated. There are more movies and TV clips, but there's plenty of women flaunting their bodies, though maybe they get away with more "slips" on tiktok, and they need to blur more on douyin...but the difference isn't as great as people seem to be saying.
Of course, this issue is about children, and I'm not one of them, so maybe it's different specifically for children.
Re: Conspiracies (Score:1)
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Consider these two important facts: first, the LGTBQ+ crowd is the loudest supporter of Palestinians and Hamas and is anti-Israel (as you said) even though Israel supports western rights such as gay marriage while the punishment for being LGBTQ+ in Gaza is to be thrown from a rooftop.
Or perhaps the internet just amplifies the most obnoxious voices who do not necessarily represent an entire group?
If any of us Americans had to deal with a regularly occurring threat of bombs falling from the sky and each time crossing our fingers that the "Iron Dome" takes most of them out before they hit anything important, we'd be absolutely demanding that our military eliminate the threat with extreme prejudice.
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the LGTBQ+ crowd is the loudest supporter of Palestinians and Hamas and is anti-Israel (as you said)
I'm not sure that's actually true. I was at a pro-Palestine protest not long ago, and none of the gay people we invited went along. One bi person went, though.
Re:Conspiracies (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider these two important facts: first, the LGTBQ+ crowd is the loudest supporter of Palestinians and Hamas and is anti-Israel
If you're going to claim facts then you better cite them. A couple of vocal people supporting Palestinians and Hamas who happen to not be strait cis-gendered, doesn't mean a crowd is a loudest supporter. In fact most LGBTQ people I know couldn't give a fuck about that region of the world, and the few that do are more upset about being persecuted by muslims.
Do you have a source for your claim that doesn't come from some tabloid shock "news" source?
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After years of woke-ness, the government is claiming domestic violence is increasing. Their solution is doubling-down on the man-bashing language while not actually blaming anyone.
In the 90s, "normal" stopped being defined as white, English-speaking, Christian, heterosexual, able-bodied (and almost-frigid, if female) person. It isn't sufficient to say, don't count the sexual partners someone has: As religion proves, bad habits last for centuries. Schools had to denounce slut-shaming and other white-su
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Grindr has, from the start, been used for drugs, sex, and other ways that are disrupting to the "family."
Grindr just cut out all of the bullshit that other dating sites had when it came to letting gay men hook up with each other for sex. Prior to Grindr, there was Adam4Adam and gay.com. Also, most of the hetero dating sites (such as OKCupid and HotOrNot) offered gay matchmaking, as did the Craigslist personals section back when it still existed.
The belief that letting gay people be themselves somehow disrupts families is just far-right homophobic propaganda. I have no idea who said it first, but it's quite
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It's only going to get worse from here, because as we start using AI, the non-scientifically studied principals that get force fed down the throat of the AI's users by the company, are determining what we learn and in what way. The "safe guards" put in place and the bias in the model's training both determine the outcome of knowledge for a
Is Facebook any different? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, Facebook isn't targeting kids to the same extent, and because they're headquartered in the States they have to be more responsive to government pressure, yada yada yada. But realistically, they've denied that they're doing their best to addict users and have been caught out at it via whistleblowers and leaks.
If the government wasn't on these companies' payrolls, a lot more would have been done. But Facebook has come out mostly unscathed. And Tik Tok - created by and beholden to a foreign power whose interests explicitly run counter to those of the US - is STILL doing its shit in the States. That tells you everything you need to know about the federal government's complicity with Big Tech.
The gov may put on a show of putting the screws to these guys, but if they were really serious these businesses would have smartened up or been shut down long ago. And maybe even at the state level the legislators ARE serious - I can't tell. But the Feds are just putting on a show. That's why, at the end of the day, Facebook, Tik Tok, and others, are still unexcised social cancers. Money talks, and bullshit doesn't even walk - it just buries the citizens.
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That's why, at the end of the day, Facebook, Tik Tok, and others, are still unexcised social cancers.
So, allowing people to freely communicate with each other is somehow malignant? Funny how the 1A is still something of a radical concept, even 232 years later.
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So, allowing people to freely communicate with each other is somehow malignant?
No - what's malignant is gathering personal data, targeting advertising, and shaping people's feeds in such a way as to keep them "engaged" so they soak up more ads and build more complete profiles on themselves and their interests, desires, habits, and thought patterns.
Think of it as a big telephone party line - guessing by your UID you're at least familiar with them and possibly even experienced them. Anyway, this party line has the operator always listening in, editing conversations in real time, connect
Playing favourites (Score:2)
Other social media corporations have done that too: This isn't about bad behaviour, this is about the government controlling corporations.
If the US government cared about children, they would be punishing Fox News, Truth Social accounts, X/Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts for inciting children (and adults) to do dangerous things (like putting all-metal objects in electrical outlets), or just for making provably false statements. The government failing to punish a large entity such as Fox News, is a bi
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And yes, I use Facebook and X, I don't use Truth Social, although I'm not aware of any kids that do either. Maybe kid-like adults, but not kids. Nor do kids real
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Instagram has done more to protect minors though than TikTok has and doesn't have algorithms that circulate communist agendas, at least as easily.
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if we continue to shit on the site (Score:1)
TikTok should read before responding (Score:2)
NPR reviewed... The material, mostly summaries of internal studies and communications, show some remedial measures — like time-management tools — would have a negligible reduction in screen time.
and the response:
TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek said: “We have robust safeguards... We have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screentime limits, family pairing, and privacy by default for minors under 16.”
Tell the world how great your tools are when you've already admitted they are bad. Our ex-president would be proud.
Are such suits appropriate? (Score:4, Interesting)
Tweens and teens love to form cliques, become very self-absorbed, and bully people not in their particular clique. Social media sites encourage this behavior, and extend it into adulthood. TikTok has adults behaving live 12-year-olds. But: so does Reddit, so does X. Sometimes, so does /.
For actual tweens and teens, the solution is a combination of parenting and school. Just like sex-ed: really, the parents ought to handle it, but many don't, so the basics also need to be covered in school. I recently gave a seminar for some kids in their early teens, and I was quite impressed with their knowledge of social media dangers. Of course, the ones who showed up were probably not the ones who needed to show up.
For adults, it's called individual responsibility. If someone really wants to hand all their money to influencers, that's their decision, just like if if they spend all their money on lottery tickets.
Duh (Score:2)
Obviously. This is 90% of their business model.