Indiana Sues TikTok Alleging Trust and Safety Concerns

Rokita alleges that TikTok is a major risk not only to the youth of his state, but the national security of the U.S. According to a statement issued Wednesday, Rokita’s office has filed a pair of lawsuits in the Superior Court of Allen County, IN., stating that TikTok’s app has exposed consumers, especially minors, to content that is sexually inappropriate, age-restricted, or a source of misinformation or disinformation.

“The TikTok app is a malicious and menacing threat unleashed on unsuspecting Indiana consumers by a Chinese company that knows full well the harms it inflicts on users,” Rokita added in the statement, alleging that the Chinese company is nothing more than a bad actor.

“With this pair of lawsuits, we hope to force TikTok to stop its false, deceptive and misleading practices, which violate Indiana law,” he said.

Rokita also characterized TikTok as a “clear and present danger to Hoosiers that is hiding in plain sight in their own pockets.”

According to the complaint, a redacted version of which has been published online, “TikTok Inc. is a Chinese Trojan Horse unleashed on unsuspecting American consumers who have been misled by the company’s false representations about the content on its platform.” Other official documents from Rokita’s office allege that TikTok is nothing more than “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Rokita also alleges that personal data for Indiana users of the app is at risk due to the platform’s origin being the People’s Republic of China. Ownership and senior leadership at ByteDance have been accused previously of collaborating with the Communist Party of China and Chinese military intelligence services.

Under the Trump Administration, the federal government attempted to block TikTok for the entire U.S. if the company failed to meet standards outlined by authorities proving no connections between the government of China and its ownership. As a result, TikTok formed a company that manages the app for the whole U.S. market. TikTok was eventually permitted to continue operating in the U.S. and remains one of the most popular social networks for not only minors but adults between 18 to 24.

After the lawsuits were announced and filed, TikTok released a statement outlining the company’s commitment to privacy and safety. Cormac Keenan, TikTok’s Ireland-based head of trust and safety, wrote a blog post pointing to the company’s work to “bolster” data security, especially in the U.S. market.

“TikTok’s mission is to inspire creativity and bring joy to people around the world,” Keenan wrote. “This mission is made possible by the critical work our trust and safety team does each day to prevent, detect, and remove harmful content and behavior from the platform.”

Neither Indiana’s pair of lawsuits, nor the remarks made by Rokita, were mentioned by Keenan in his post.

Christopher Wray, the current director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, testified to the House Homeland Security Committee in November that the premier law enforcement agency views the U.S.-based operations for TikTok pose “national security concerns.”

“They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose, or to control software on millions of devices, which gives it an opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices,” Wray said.

“We’re combining forces between the rest of our U.S. Safety team and our Global Trust and Safety Team to deliver on our shared mission to protect people from harm, promote platform integrity, and foster a place that brings people joy,” Keenan wrote in the Dec. 8 blog post.

“By bringing together the talents of our teams, we aim to create even more effective safeguards for our global community, with increased people power and more seamless handling of potentially harmful content, issues, and events globally,” he wrote, adding that the global safety team at TikTok now encompasses 40,000 people. Keenan also pointed to the continued work of Tara Wadhwa, TikTok’s director of U.S. policy and a senior manager in the country’s trust and safety team. Keenan notes that the country-based team will advance protections.

TikTok has previously committed to limiting the involvement of Chinese staff operating the U.S. side of the business and accessing data for all American users. TikTok says that all U.S. user traffic and data are now being routed to servers that are controlled by software giant Oracle.

Oracle was a proponent of the Trump administration’s efforts to block TikTok. In fact, Oracle was shortlisted as a potential parent for the U.S. operations of TikTok, per the coordination of protocols developed with the federal government and the safety teams at ByteDance. Oracle now controls the data business for TikTok’s U.S. market.

TikTok has also announced that it is working to develop new policies that further restrict sexual content to older audiences in a bid to stop minors from viewing such content. Adult performers who use TikTok for marketing purposes are also choosing to adopt a vernacular of “algospeak” to beat algorithms that identify unsuitable or inappropriate content. “Algospeak” is a set of euphemistic terms and emojis used to avoid any deplatforming, shadow-banning, or removal of sex-related content to beat the safety and trust algorithms on sites like TikTok.

Technology news outlet Lifehacker reported that algospeak in the context of preventing the removal of content for an adult creator is a set of “coded words and emojis that aren’t immediately decipherable — but whose meaning you could infer alongside the right context clues.” Adult creators also get around these types of algorithms and terms of use via online services like Linktree, AllMyLinks, and others.