Attorney General Lynn Fitch issued the following statement.
Attorney General Lynn Fitch today joined a bipartisan coalition of 14 attorneys general in filing separate enforcement actions against TikTok for violations of state consumer protection laws. Attorney General Fitch's action alleges that TikTok exploits and harms young users and deceives the public about the social media platform’s dangers.
"TikTok is conducting a dangerous experiment with our children’s developing minds,” said Attorney General Lynn Fitch, “and our children are suffering for it. TikTok knows it maximizes profit by addicting children to its platform, and it knows that feeding them increasingly extreme and disturbing videos keeps children hooked. All the while, TikTok gives parents the false impression this is safe for their children. I am proud to stand with my colleagues from across the country to support parents. Our children need us to stand strong for them now."
Use of TikTok is pervasive among young people in the United States. In 2023, 63% of all Americans aged 13 to 17 who responded to a Pew Research survey reported using TikTok, and most teenagers in the U.S. were using TikTok daily. In 2022, U.S.-based TikTok users aged 0 to 17 accounted for more than $2 billion in TikTok’s ad revenue, which is more than one-third of TikTok’s overall advertising revenue that year.
TikTok’s misconduct arises from its underlying business model that focuses on maximizing young users’ time on the TikTok platform to enable the company to boost revenue from selling targeted advertising space.
The complaint explains, "TikTok intentionally manipulates the release of dopamine in Young Users’ developing brains and causes them to use TikTok in an excessive, compulsive, and addictive manner that harms them both mentally and physically. Defendants have designed and instituted a business model, which relies on keeping Young Users on TikTok for as long as possible, so that TikTok can collect maximum data from these users and expose them to more advertising and marketing. More advertising directed to Young Users means more revenue for Defendants. And so, rather than making their product safe or disclosing the platform’s harms, Defendants mislead the public about the ways TikTok harms children and teens."
As of today, 23 attorneys general have filed actions against TikTok for its conduct toward youth, including existing actions filed by the attorneys general of Utah, Nevada, Indiana, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, and Texas.
In August, AG Fitch joined a coalition of 21 attorneys general in asking the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to uphold the national TikTok divest-or-ban legislation passed by Congress earlier this year.
Last month, AG Fitch urged lawmakers to require a U.S. Surgeon General warning on all algorithm-driven social media platforms.
Attorney General Fitch filed a similar lawsuit against Meta for the harms to children caused by the addictive design of Facebook and Instagram.
26 comments:
A plaintiffs' law firm is carrying the ball on this; Fitch is on the bench.
" "TikTok intentionally manipulates the release of dopamine in Young Users’ developing brains and causes them to use TikTok in an excessive, compulsive, and addictive manner that harms them both mentally and physically. Defendants have designed and instituted a business model, which relies on keeping Young Users on TikTok for as long as possible, so that TikTok can collect maximum data from these users and expose them to more advertising and marketing."
All social media companies do this.
You are an idiot if you use tik tok. You are a bad parent if you allow your child to use tik tok. People ask what would happen if China invaded the states. They already have. Have some intestinal fortitude - ban and remove tik tok from all devices.
It's fixin to be on like Donkey Kong any time Fitch and her crack team ride out!
Why don’t these legan geniuses just demand that the Legislatures in their respective states do their job and create laws protecting children? Just like legislating against cild access to porn sites, they can make laws that minors cannot have access to TikTok.
Very simple. Everybody stays in their lanes and does productive work.
That is an example of some bold, dynamic, and visionary leadership by the AG that should serve as a beacon for the bright horizons for Mississippi with such creativity.
The Complaint doesn't state a legal cause of action until page 101 of 110. That's alot of hat and a field without cattle.
Some of you may want to note where any recovery goes on Page 108 of 110. It ain't the children.
Excellent question, and the answer is because not only is legislation and law making for sale, but also for sale is inaction and stonewalling. Just ask Bennie Thompson how one goes from being a Hinds Co Supervisor to a mega millionaire in DC.
"Why don’t these legal geniuses just demand that the Legislatures in their respective states do their job and create laws protecting children? Just like legislating against child access to porn sites, they can make laws that minors cannot have access to TikTok."
The short answer is that the legal geniuses did pass such a law: Mississippi House Bill 1126. NetChoice challenged it and held that it violated the First Amendment. It is currently on appeal to the 5th Circuit.
When is Lynn Fitch going to collect the $113,000 the state of Mississippi ordered the Leflore County board of supervisors to repay ( except Lee Abraham) in misspent Covid funds?
Other dopamine release manipulators: gambling, "Charlie's Angels", Jack Daniels, your favorite Netflix series, Fritos, etc. It is not "illegal" or civilly "actionable" to "manipulate the release of dopamine in Young User's developing brains." Or any other brain. Fritos, AC/DC and Taylor Swift do exactly this. 10:31 has it. Ban it if it hurts children, or ban the use by children, and punish adults/parents who allow it. We do that with other "dopamine manipulators" not suitable for children.
When you "sue" and seek civil damages against companies (Chinese or not) that market a legal and legitimate product - simply because the legality of it and success of it spawns unintended (from your perspective) consequences - you diminish legitimate lawsuits. How does a manufacturer walk a fine line between a "great product" and an "addictive product?" So the state and Lynn Fitch would be "fine" with TikTok if it did not make the owners so much money? It's the "advertising" that hurts the kids? Not the hours they spend on it chasing a cheap dopamine high? Fritos and Oreos next? I agree Tik Tok sucks, the business model is amoral, and it (and other social media crap and excess smartphones use in general) is terrible for children and all of us. Let the legislature ban the app (or the data feedback loop) or leave the company alone and fuss at the parents. In other words, act like a governing body/legislature and tell business people what they can and can't do.
Is tik toc her nickname for mother in law?
only lawsuits that have giant contingency fees. I can't imagine what's up with that
Most social media platforms have similar endless
Videos you can scroll. Tik tok just happens to get things circulating h, good and bad, that average joe would never have seen if not for this app.
I hope sombody tells her that TikTok isnt a company, it is a product released by the Chinese company ByteDance. Saying she is going to sue TikTok is like saying she is going to sue the Chevrolet Silverado instead of suing GM. She sounds fully retarded.
The Defendant parties are very specific, The parents and the avenues of access were not made co-Defendants, even merely as parties joined of necessity. Unless 10-12-14-16-year-olds are as a pattern and practice readily obtaining phones and service on them wholly on their own and without the parents' direct or implied involvement and consent, and those kids are bypassing reasonable controls offered to the parents by providers (or initiated by those providers) against access by minors to the party Defendants' content, the defense might bring this up.
I agree with 11:38. There is a supervisor in Marshall county that just harvested $25,000 worth of wheat he didn't plant. The property in question was sold to a company that's going to build a battery plant, and the farmers were paid for the wheat they were never going to harvest. I guess the supervisor was a farmer and decided to take his combine and harvest the wheat. This type of operating in our counties is going on all over this state. Get on it Kingfish.
what a waste of time, money, and resources.
I mean I am not a doctor, but I am hopelessly addictive to listening to the mental masturbatory pontifications on this site made by the masses of underpaid and obviously underworked attorneys who think they should be judges.
" "TikTok intentionally manipulates the release of dopamine in Young Users’ developing brains and causes them to use TikTok in an excessive, compulsive, and addictive manner that harms them both mentally and physically."
Kinda Like "Public School"?
I thought tort reform eliminated frivolous lawsuits. It "releases dopamine"?
She jumping on the bandwagon lead by them Liberals in Cali and New York! How dare she ?
Trey Lamar told her to sue!
More government lawfare. TikTok, you see, hasn’t lined up with the mainstream narrative that one never, never, no, not ever posts anything unflattering about — how to put this in a publishable format to pass muster? — a tiny Middle Eastern country’s desperate battle against those who would attack it for no reason, no reason at all other than — well, there is no reason. They’re simply attacked regularly for the past two millennia just because.
And that cannot be allowed. That isn’t how to keep on rockin’ in the free world. That ain’t kosher. So Fitch is a cog in the system that’s going to wear TikTok down till it either chooses to comply with the narrative or Your Government confiscates it and hands it over to some political crony, where it’ll become just another Washington propaganda outlet for wasting time and conditioning minds.
9:25, Tiktok is already the CCP's "propaganda outlet for wasting time and conditioning minds." Demanding that the CCP either divest from the version of Tiktok available in America, or be banned, is not unreasonable. Do you think China allows Facebook to operate freely in China? What about Elon Musk's X?
That you insinuate Isreal deserves terrorist attacks while discussing Tiktok tell us all we need to know about your allegiance. I'm surprised your comment omitted a reference to Ukraine as "my beauty."
One fact rarely mentioned is TT pays creators much better than Youtube. Youtube tries to gyp creators at every chance possible.
TikTok is banned in China too. ByteDance doesn’t allow Chinese kids to see the Western cersion. Instead they get ByteDance’s Douyin which is much more tame and educational. China long ago banned most of the subversive influences that are so pervasive in the West. Rap music is banned on platforms for kids as well as anything related to alternative sexual lifestyles and anything related to sexual perversions, is not allowed on platforms for kids like Douyin. The CCP would be considered far-right conservatives by American leftists and they even openly mock with a deragatory Chinese word Baizuo 白左 which means “White Leftist”
Post a Comment