New York accuses TikTok of running secret safety tests on teens

New York attorney general Letitia James has added new allegations to a child safety lawsuit against TikTok, accusing the platform of running secret experiments on teen users.

The new claims are attributed to a Bloomberg Businessweek report, based on a confidential TikTok document, about an algorithmic test the company began in 2021 that impacted about 15 million US users, including one teen who died by suicide.

For the experiment, TikTok withheld a new safety feature from 10% of US users in order to test whether the change reduced user time on the platform.

“As a result, TikTok has subjected users whom TikTok included in such A/B tests to an experience that TikTok has made less safe by design,” James said in the amended lawsuit, which includes details of the experiment that were previously sealed from public view. The teen who died by suicide was in the test group that didn’t get the safety features TikTok rolled out.

In a court filing, TikTok confirmed that it runs tests on its platform that “may involve a portion of platform traffic that continued to receive the original experience.” However, the company denied that those tests make the platform less safe for those users.

“We continuously make improvements to our platform which means that, like most companies, we regularly test new products and features to validate the experience and understand how they work in the real world,” the company said in a statement.

New York is one of more than a dozen states that have sued the social media company over claims that its platform is harmful to the mental health of young users and that leaders at the company misled the public about the safety on TikTok.

In September, TikTok agreed to pay up to US$300 million to resolve a similar case in Alabama, but other cases filed by individual states are still pending.

TikTok is facing pressure to resolve those cases after Meta Platforms reached a settlement agreement with nearly every state in the country over youth safety issues.

Meta agreed to make changes to how its platforms operate, as well as pay up to US$18 billion.

But the settlement included an unusual provision: a US$5.3 billion portion of Meta’s payout over the next decade depends on whether TikTok and Snap commit to adding similar platform changes and agree to make comparable contributions to state initiatives to help kids.

Meta, TikTok, Snap and Google’s YouTube are collectively facing thousands of lawsuits over similar allegations filed by state attorneys general, individual users and school districts.

The bulk of those cases have been consolidated into multidistrict proceedings. Others, including the one filed by New York, are being tried separately.

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