New York alleges TikTok used fake safety feature on minors

New York’s lawsuit against TikTok alleges the platform gave teens and children access to a placebo version of a safety feature, rather than a working one, as part of an internal experiment. According to Reuters, the experiment involved thousands of users, including teens and children, who had opted into safety tools like “Algo Refresh,” which lets people reset their recommendations to stop seeing unwanted or potentially harmful content. Users in the experiment believed they had activated the feature, but their feeds didn’t actually change — unlike those of users outside the experiment, who had access to a fully functioning version of the tool, the lawsuit alleges.

New York’s case is one of more than two dozen lawsuits filed by U.S. states that accuse TikTok of designing its platform to encourage addictive use among children and misleading users about its safety. TikTok told Reuters: “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 did not immediately return a request for comment from TechCrunch.

The lawsuit also claims TikTok ran other experiments on safety features. Bloomberg reported in June that one such experiment withheld a safety feature from 15 million U.S. users, including a teenager who later died by suicide.

Why it matters

The placebo-feature allegation adds a new angle to the wave of state lawsuits against TikTok: it’s not just that safety tools may be inadequate, but that some users may have been shown features that looked functional while doing nothing at all.