• by Wendy Davis , October 3, 2024

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued TikTok for allegedly violating a new state law by sharing teens' personal data without first obtaining verifiable parental consent.

TikTok shares "personal identifying information" of minors under 18 with "business partners, including advertisers, and search engines,” Paxton alleges in a complaint filed Thursday in Galveston County.

TikTok also shares minors' names and usernames with other app users, Paxton alleges.

“If a person uses TikTok to search for the account of a known minor whose account is set to 'private,' defendants will share and disclose the known minor’s personal identifying information, such as their name and username,” the complaint alleges. “If a person uses TikTok to search for the account of a known minor whose account is set to 'public,' defendants will share and disclose the known minor’s personal identifying information, such as their name, username, profile image, social media contacts, and user content (e.g., comments, photographs, livestreams, audio recordings, videos, text, hashtags, and virtual item videos that users choose to create with or upload to TikTok).”

He adds that TikTok shares personal information 16- and 17-year-old users with public accounts, as well as those users' content, through its recommendation engine.

Paxton claims that TikTok is violating the state's new Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment Act (HB 18) -- which partially took effect last month.

That law has provisions that restrict how social platforms handle minors' data, and provisions requiring social platforms to use filtering technology to prevent "harmful" content from being served to users under 18.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman in Austin recently enjoined the state from enforcing the provisions that would have required platforms to block “harmful” content -- defined in the statute as including material that “promotes,” “glorifies,” or “facilitates” eating disorders, self-harm, substance abuse, and “grooming ... or other sexual exploitation or abuse.”

But Pitman allowed the state to enforce other portions of the law, including restrictions on TikTok's ability to handle minors' data and to serve them with targeted ads.

Paxton alleges that TikTok is violating provisions of the law that went into effect, including requirements that social platforms use a “commercially reasonable method” to verify a parent-child relationship, and enable verified parents to control children's privacy settings.

TikTok does not "provide the parents or guardians of users known to be 13 to 17 years old with parental tools that allow them to control or limit most of a known minor’s privacy and account settings,” the complaint alleges.

TikTok in 2020 rolled out a “family pairing” program that allows parents to link their TikTok accounts to their teens' accounts and set controls.

But Paxton alleges that the family pairing program doesn't adequately verify a parent-child relationship, and also “unnecessarily requires a parent or guardian to create an account” in order to use the controls.

TikTok hasn't yet responded to MediaPost's request for comment.