The Texas Attorney General’s office has filed suit against TikTok, charging the short video app with violating Texas state law by sharing children’s sensitive personal information without parental consent.
The Lone Star state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton accused TikTok of “exploiting Texas children and failing to prioritize minors' online safety and privacy" in a statement released Thursday.
The lawsuit, citing Texas’ Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act (SCOPE), not only seeks an injunction, but civil penalties of up to $10,000 for each violation.
The SCOPE Act prohibits big tech platforms, such as TikTok, from “sharing, disclosing, or selling a minor's personal identifying information (PII) without permission from the child's parent or legal guardian,” the AG’s office wrote in a news release.
“Today, I’m suing TikTok for sharing minors’ personal data in violation of Texas law,” Paxton posted on X. “Big Tech companies are on notice that I will hold them accountable,” the AG said.
BREAKING: Today, I’m suing TikTok for sharing minors’ personal data in violation of Texas law.
undefined Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) October 3, 2024
Big Tech companies are on notice that I will hold them accountable for exploiting Texas children and failing to prioritize minors’ online safety and privacy. pic.twitter.com/lppZ8ebJkd
As part of Texas law, social media companies are required to provide parents with the tools to manage and control the privacy and account settings on a child's account.
TikTok has failed to comply with these requirements and even allows children’s PII to be shared from accounts set to "private," which subjects kids to targeted advertising, the announcement said.
“TikTok and other social media companies cannot ignore their duties under Texas law," Paxton explained about the lawsuit, which was filed in a state court in Galveston County.
TikTok has not responded to the filing as of Thursday.
TikTok is currently facing off with the US government in an attempt to block a law signed by President Biden this spring that would ban the social media app from operating in the US unless its parent company, the Chinese-owned ByteDance, divests from the platform.
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