Todd Rokita accuses the platform of minimizing the possibility that the Chinese authorities can access the personal data of its users based in the United States.
The Indiana State Attorney in the United States filed a complaint on Wednesday against the popular social network TikTok, accusing it of misleading users about data protection and the safety of content offered to children.
The application, known for its short, musical or parody videos, is regularly criticized by the US authorities, who accuse it of its influence on minors or its links to China, as its parent company is the Chinese company ByteDance.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita filed two complaints. The first accuses TikTok of minimizing the possibility that Chinese authorities may have access to the personal data of its US-based users.
“The company must tell the truth to its users”
More and more US states are banning government officials from downloading the app to their office phones, and Texas said Wednesday it wants to take “aggressive action” against TikTok.
The company, for its part, regularly ensures that it has implemented protocols to never give the Chinese authorities access to the data of its users based in the United States.
In another complaint, the Indiana prosecutor accuses the group of defrauding minors and their parents by claiming that the application “only contains sexual content, profanity or references to drugs on an ‘infrequent’ basis. or ‘moderately’ when in in reality the application is full of extreme examples of this type of content”, according to a press release sent by its services.
“At a minimum, the company must tell its users the truth about age-appropriate content and the uncertainty of the data it collects,” comments the prosecutor in the document. “We hope these lawsuits will force TikTok to come clean and change its ways,” he added.
