Attorney General Brenna Bird from the great state of Iowa is going after TikTok with a new lawsuit. The latest legal battle being fought in the US against the ByteDance-owned video platform isn’t just seeking an all out ban. Instead, the state of Iowa is targeting TikTok over how it allegedly age rates itself inappropriately in the App Store.
Emma Roth, reporting for The Verge:
TikTok is getting sued by the state of Iowa over claims that it’s lying to parents about the presence of sexual content, drugs, alcohol, profanity, and other inappropriate material in the app. In a lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird claimed TikTok is making this kind of content “easily accessible” to young users while maintaining an inaccurate “12+” age rating on the Apple App Store.
A summary of the lawsuit from Iowa Attorney General Bird covers the accusations:
- Claims a “12+” rating in Apple’s App Store, despite frequent and intense adult content, including:
- Sexual content and nudity
- Profanity and crude humor
- Mature and suggestive themes
- Alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use
- Works around parental controls on Apple devices by wrongfully rating its app “12+.”
- Violates App Store guidelines by saying harmful content is “infrequent/mild” when it is actually “frequent/intense.”
- Recommends inappropriate content to children as young as 13.
The lawsuit claims that TikTok is specifically in violation of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act. In the press release announcing the litigation, Bird’s office explains that the lawsuit “aims to stop TikTok from misleading parents and users about the availability of inappropriate content on the app. It also challenges TikTok’s misleading statements about TikTok’s parental controls, both in the platform’s Community Guidelines and in the Google and Microsoft app stores.”
“As a mom and prosecutor, I am committed to equipping parents with information to keep their kids safe and to holding TikTok accountable,” Attorney General Bird concludes.
This app, TikTok you say? It may also be the sort of thing Apple might want to look into… especially given Apple’s pitch of the App Store as a safe and moderated property. You can read Iowa’s lawsuit filed against TikTok here.
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