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Written by Judy Godoy
(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department plans to focus an upcoming lawsuit against TikTok on allegations that the popular social media platform violated children’s privacy rights, rather than allegations that it misled adult users about its data privacy practices, according to a source familiar with the matter. With the command.
The US Federal Trade Commission investigated potential violations by TikTok and its parent company ByteDance and referred the case to the Justice Department on Tuesday.
“The investigation revealed reason to believe that the named defendants are violating or are about to violate the law and that the action is in the public interest,” the FTC said in a statement at the time.
Reuters first reported in 2020 that the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice were looking into allegations that the popular social media app failed to adhere to a 2019 agreement aimed at protecting children’s privacy.
TikTok said it strongly disputes the FTC’s allegations and is disappointed that the agency decided to file a lawsuit.
The investigation is separate from ongoing concerns in Congress that the Chinese government may have improperly accessed the data of TikTok’s 170 million users.
TikTok denies this allegation.
TikTok is challenging a law passed in April that requires its Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok’s US assets by January 19 or face a ban.
ByteDance said in the case on Thursday that the ban would be inevitable without court intervention, and that divestment is “not technologically, commercially or legally possible.”
(This story has been rewritten to fix a typo in the headline)
