Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Streams on TikTok Live were used to exploit children, according to an unsolved case issued by Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes. The lawsuit alleges that TikTok not only knew that TikTok Lives exposed children to messages from adults, but that the company also directly benefited from other exchanges through the TikTok Live gift system.
Follow up search and Forbes in TikTok Live, TikTok performed its commentary called “Project Meramec,” according to the suit. The company found that “hundreds of thousands of kids” were following TikTok’s age restrictions, hosting livestreams and chatting with adults.
Because TikTok invests a portion of its digital gift sales in streams, the company technically makes money on “public gifts” for “nudity and sex” that happened on streams. And since TikTok’s algorithm favors streams where real gifts are exchanged, the lawsuit says, some of these adulterous streams were shared more than they otherwise would have been.
The lawsuit also details another TikTok investigation, “Project Jupiter,” which looked into whether the TikTok Live giveaway was being used for money laundering. As it turned out, it was. According to the lawsuit, the company discovered that “criminals were involved in drug trafficking and fraud” during the game.
When reached for comment on the lawsuit, TikTok shared the following statement:
This case ignores the number of measures that TikTok has voluntarily implemented to support the safety and well-being of the community. Instead, the complaint cherry-picks misleading statements and historical documents and renders them out of context, undermining our commitment to the safety of our community.
We support our efforts, which include: strong security and time limits for youth accounts that are enabled by default, Family Pairing tools for parents to monitor their youth, strict compliance requirements, and continued enforcement of Community guidelines.
Utah’s AG also filed this type of lawsuit in June 2024to follow a separate suit from 2023 related to the design of the TikTok app. The Utah case is not the first time the company has come under scrutiny for its handling of child safety. The FTC has investigated TikTok protecting children’s privacyand the cancellation of the program – now went to the Supreme Court on appeal – was partially pushed back by concerns about how a video game program could be used to appeal to children.
