On October 8, 2024, the Washington Office of the Attorney General (AG) announced that it filed a lawsuit against TiktTok Inc., TiktTok LLC, TiktTok Pte. Ltd., TiktTok Ltd., ByteDance Inc., and ByteDance Ltd. (collectively, TikTok), for violating the state Consumer Protection Act by targeting youth with features that encourage compulsive and excessive use, as well as by deploying misleading public statements about safety and content moderation practices.

Nationwide investigation

The Washington AG clarified that the lawsuit is part of a larger investigation initiated by several AGs in 2021. The nationwide effort includes similar lawsuits by AGs in California, New York, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, and the District of Columbia.

Furthermore, the Washington AG outlined that eight other states, including Arkansas, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada, New Hampshire, Nebraska, and Utah, filed individual lawsuits earlier in the investigation.

Addictive patterns

The Washington AG alleged that TikTok intentionally created an addictive platform by employing harmful, addictive-by-design features specifically targeted and tailored to exploiting, manipulating, and capitalizing on young users, such as 'endless' or 'infinite' scrolling and push notifications. Moreover, the Washington AG stated that the screen time limit for teens is not a sufficient mitigation measure as it can be disabled.

Age restrictions

The Washington AG explained that TikTok's platform implements a 'Kids Mode,' which screens a user based on their birth date (also known as 'age gating') and restricts underage users' access to certain platform functionalities and content.

The Washington AG further alleged that this approach is bypassed by children, as it depends on children reporting their age and that users under 13 years of age are incentivized to and routinely supply a false date of birth to access the full TikTok experience.

You can read the press release here and the full lawsuit here.