Internal documents from Tiktok that leaked on Friday, Oct. 11, revealed that company executives knew the app was harmful to children and actively tried to keep them on the platform. A redaction failure exposed the documents which are part of an ongoing lawsuit against TikTok by 14 attorneys general across the United States.
Kentucky Public Radio obtained the documents filed by Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman before they were resealed under court order.
The lawsuit said TikTok’s own research found “compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy and increased anxiety.”
Despite that, the lawsuit accused TikTok executives of maximizing engagement amongst youth while promoting child safety features that were ineffective. An internal memo from the company in 2019 states, “as expected, across most engagement metrics, the younger the user, the better the performance.”
The investigation found TikTok knew that a significant number of adults were messaging underage teens about stripping and sending virtual currency as gifts.
TikTok is also accused of adjusting the algorithm to remove content featuring “not attractive subjects.”
A spokesperson for TikTok said the complaint “cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes outdated documents out of context to misrepresent our commitment to community safety.”
