Washington (United States) (AFP) – TikTok goes on trial Monday in Alabama, accused by the state of misleading parents about tools meant to shield children from harmful content, in the first case against the platform to go before a US jury. The trial in state court in Montgomery, expected to last two to three weeks, comes as social media companies face a wave of litigation across the United States over the harm their apps allegedly cause young users.
TikTok has until now settled cases against it that were headed for trial, including a Los Angeles lawsuit brought by a young woman and a suit from a Kentucky school district. Meta, by contrast, has taken its chances in court — with bruising results. In March, a jury in New Mexico ordered the Facebook and Instagram owner to pay $375 million after finding it had misled the public about the safety of its platforms for children. That same month, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google’s YouTube negligent in the case of a 20-year-old woman who said she became hooked on social media as a child, awarding her $6 million. In August, Meta agreed to pay $18 billion to settle a sweeping lawsuit brought by US states accusing it of designing Instagram and Facebook to addict children.
Going to trial could expose TikTok to unprecedented public scrutiny of how it handles safety internally, with company documents and executive testimony potentially aired in open court. Alabama originally sued TikTok and its Chinese parent company ByteDance in April 2025, alleging the app was engineered to hook young users “just like a sophisticated gambling machine.” The state later narrowed its case to claims under Alabama’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act, focusing on whether TikTok misrepresented the effectiveness of features such as “Restricted Mode” and “Kids Mode.”
In its complaint, the state said investigators set up TikTok accounts posing as 13-, 14-, and 15-year-olds in Alabama and switched on Restricted Mode. Despite TikTok’s assurances that users in that mode should not see mature themes, the accounts were quickly served videos about suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, alcohol, and sex, according to the filing. The state also accuses TikTok of falsely telling app stores the platform was suitable for children aged 12 and up and contained only mild or infrequent mature content.
TikTok, whose US operations were transferred this year to a venture led by American investors, has argued that the case should be paused and that it is shielded by Section 230, a federal law that protects online platforms from liability for content posted by users. The company has said it “designed its platform with teen safety as a key priority.” Alabama is seeking an injunction for TikTok to change its practices, civil penalties, and damages.
© 2024 AFP
