HELENA — Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s office has announced a lawsuit against the social media app TikTok and its owners, claiming that it exposed teenage users to inappropriate and addictive content.
The suit accuses TikTok and its parent company ByteDance of violating a Montana consumer protection law by misleading the public about who the app is appropriate for.
"TikTok must be held accountable for poisoning the minds of children and lying to parents about the videos their children can view on the app,” Knudsen said in a statement. “Parents need to know the truth about the content their children have access to on the app and TikTok is pushing to their feeds. As attorney general, it's my job to hold bad actors deceiving Montanans accountable and I intend to do just that."
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A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office told MTN the suit was filed in Lewis & Clark County District Court, and it was under seal because the complaint “contains material protected by confidentiality agreements TikTok has with the State of Montana and Apple.” The office provided a redacted version of the complaint.
In app stores, TikTok is rated as appropriate for users aged 12 or 13 and above, meaning that it includes only “infrequent or mild” profanity, sexual content, and alcohol and drug references. However, the complaint says state staff created test accounts on the app using a 13-year-old’s birthday and found it was easy to access much more mature content.
“That is deception, a false promise, and a misrepresentation,” the complaint said.
The filing also claims that TikTok “designs its app to be addictive, including to minors, is aware that minors in fact become addicted to its app, and fails to inform minors and their parents about the app’s addictive qualities.”
The complaint asks the court to rule that TikTok’s representations of its content are “deceptive, willful and false” and “likely to mislead Montana consumers.”
A spokesperson for TikTok responded to the lawsuit in a statement to MTN.
“We strongly disagree with these claims, many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading,” they said. “We're proud of and remain deeply committed to the work we've done to protect teens, and we will continue to update and improve our product. We provide robust safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users, and have voluntarily launched safety features such as default screentime limits, family pairing, and privacy by default for minors under 16.”
The arguments in this lawsuit are very similar to a federal suit Knudsen’s office filed against Instagram last year, claiming that that app also exposed teen users to adult content and an addictive algorithm. That lawsuit was transferred to federal court in California, and there has been no recent update.
Knudsen was also one of the main backers of Montana’s law banning TikTok from operating in the state unless ByteDance – a company headquartered in China – sells it. Supporters of the ban cited concerns the app might expose users’ data to China, a claim the company has denied.
Montana’s TikTok ban is on hold while courts consider a federal law that gave ByteDance a year to sell the app or face a nationwide ban.
