美国司法部起诉 TikTok，指控该公司违反儿童网络隐私法

【中美创新时报2024 年 8 月 2 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）美国司法部周五起诉 TikTok，指控该公司违反儿童网络隐私法并违反了与另一家联邦机构达成的和解协议。美联社记者哈莱路亚·哈德罗（HALELUYA HADERO ）对此作了下述报道。

该投诉与联邦贸易委员会一起在加州联邦法院提起，此时美国和这家知名社交媒体公司又陷入了一场法律纠纷，这将决定 TikTok 是否或如何继续在美国运营。

最新诉讼的焦点是针对TikTok及其中国母公司字节跳动违反联邦法律的指控。TikTok是一个深受年轻用户喜爱的潮流平台。该法律要求面向儿童的应用程序和网站在收集13岁以下儿童的个人信息之前必须征得父母的同意。诉讼还称，这些公司未能满足父母要求删除其子女账户的要求，即使知道这些账户属于13岁以下的儿童，他们也选择不删除这些账户。

美国司法部民事部门负责人布莱恩·博因顿在一份声明中表示：“这一行动是必要的，以防止被告在未经父母同意或控制的情况下收集和使用儿童的隐私信息，他们是惯犯，而且规模庞大。”

TikTok表示不同意这些指控，“其中许多指控与过去的事件和做法有关，这些事件和做法在事实上是不准确的，或者已经得到解决。”

该公司在一份声明中表示：“我们提供适合年龄的体验，并采取严格的保护措施，主动删除可疑的未成年人，并自愿推出默认屏幕时间限制、家庭配对和针对未成年人的额外隐私保护等功能。”

美国决定提起诉讼，此前联邦贸易委员会调查了这些公司是否遵守了之前与 TikTok 前身 Musical.ly 达成的和解协议。

2019 年，联邦政府起诉 Musical.ly，指控其违反了《儿童在线隐私保护法》（COPPA），未能通知父母其收集和使用 13 岁以下儿童的个人信息。

同年，Musical.ly（2017 年被字节跳动收购并与 TikTok 合并）同意支付 570 万美元以解决这些指控。这两家公司还受到法院命令的约束，要求他们遵守《儿童在线隐私保护法》，但政府称这并未发生。

在诉状中，司法部和联邦贸易委员会指控 TikTok 故意允许儿童创建账户并保留他们的个人信息，而没有通知他们的父母。这种做法延伸到在“儿童模式”中创建的账户，这是 TikTok 为 13 岁以下儿童提供的版本。该功能允许用户观看视频，但禁止他们上传内容。

两家机构声称收集的信息包括应用程序上的活动和用于构建用户资料的其他标识符。他们还指责 TikTok 与其他公司（如 Meta 的 Facebook 和一家名为 AppsFlyer 的分析公司）共享数据，以说服“儿童模式”用户更多地使用该平台，TikTok 称这种做法是“重新定位不太活跃的用户”。

诉状称，TikTok 还允许儿童使用第三方服务的凭证创建账户，而无需提供年龄或获得父母批准。政府将这些账户归类为“年龄不明”账户，这些机构称这些账户已经增长到数百万个。

在父母发现他们孩子的一些账户并要求删除后，联邦官员表示，TikTok 要求他们通过一个复杂的过程来停用这些账户，而且经常不满足他们的要求。

总体而言，政府表示，TikTok 采用了有缺陷的政策，无法阻止儿童账户在其应用程序上激增，并暗示该公司没有认真对待这个问题。自 2019 年以来，至少在某些时期，投诉称 TikTok 的人工审核员平均花费五到七秒钟来审查被标记为可能属于儿童的账户。它还表示，TikTok 和字节跳动拥有可用于识别和删除儿童账户的技术，但不会出于这个原因使用这些技术。

起诉书称，这些涉嫌违规行为导致数百万 13 岁以下儿童使用常规 TikTok 应用程序，允许他们与成人互动并访问成人内容。

3 月，一位知情人士告诉美联社，联邦贸易委员会的调查还在调查 TikTok 是否违反了禁止“不公平和欺骗性”商业行为的联邦法律的一部分，即拒绝中国个人访问美国用户数据。

这些指控并未包括在起诉书中，起诉书要求法院对这些公司处以罚款并发布初步禁令，以防止未来发生违规行为。

其他社交媒体公司也因其处理儿童数据的方式而受到抨击。

2019 年，谷歌和 YouTube 同意支付 1.7 亿美元罚款，以和解指控，即这家受欢迎的视频网站在未经父母同意的情况下非法收集儿童的个人信息。

去年秋天，美国数十个州起诉了拥有 Facebook 和 Instagram 的 Meta Platforms Inc.，指控其故意设计 Instagram 和 Facebook 上的功能，让儿童沉迷于其平台，从而伤害了年轻人并加剧了青少年心理健康危机。33 个州提起的诉讼称，Meta 经常在未经父母同意的情况下收集 13 岁以下儿童的数据，违反了《儿童在线隐私保护法》。9 名总检察长也在各自的州提起诉讼，使采取行动的州总数达到 41 个，加上华盛顿特区。

题图：TikTok Inc. 位于加利福尼亚州卡尔弗城的办公室。Bing Guan/Bloomberg

附原英文报道：

Justice Department sues TikTok, accusing the company of violating a children’s online privacy law

By HALELUYA HADERO The Associated Press,Updated August 2, 2024 

The Justice Department sued TikTok on Friday, accusing the company of violating children’s online privacy law and running afoul of a settlement it had reached with another federal agency.

The complaint, filed together with the Federal Trade Commission in a California federal court, comes as the U.S. and the prominent social media company are embroiled in yet another legal battle that will determine if – or how – TikTok will continue to operate in the country.

The latest lawsuit focuses on allegations that TikTok, a trend-setting platform popular among young users, and its China-based parent company ByteDance violated a federal law that requires kid-oriented apps and websites to get parental consent before collecting personal information of children under 13. It also says the companies failed to honor requests from parents who wanted their children’s accounts deleted, and chose not to delete accounts even when the firms knew they belonged to kids under 13.

“This action is necessary to prevent the defendants, who are repeat offenders and operate on a massive scale, from collecting and using young children’s private information without any parental consent or control,” Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in a statement.

TikTok said it disagreed with the allegations, “many of which relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed.”

“We offer age-appropriate experiences with stringent safeguards, proactively remove suspected underage users and have voluntarily launched features such as default screentime limits, Family Pairing, and additional privacy protections for minors,” the company said in a statement.

The U.S. decided to file the lawsuit following an investigation by the FTC that looked into whether the companies were complying with a previous settlement involving TikTok’s predecessor, Musical.ly.

In 2019, the federal government sued Musical.ly, alleging it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, by failing to notify parents about its collection and use of personal information for kids under 13.

That same year, Musical.ly — acquired by ByteDance in 2017 and merged with TikTok — agreed to pay $5.7 million to resolve those allegations. The two companies were also subject to a court order requiring them to comply with COPPA, which the government says hasn’t happened.

In the complaint, the Justice Department and the FTC allege TikTok has knowingly allowed children to create accounts and retained their personal information without notifying their parents. This practice extends to accounts created in “Kids Mode,” a version of TikTok for children under 13. The feature allows users to view videos but bars them from uploading content.

The two agencies allege the information collected included activities on the app and other identifiers used to build user profiles. They also accuse TikTok of sharing the data with other companies – such as Meta’s Facebook and an analytics company called AppsFlyer – to persuade “Kids Mode” users to be on the platform more, a practice TikTok called “re-targeting less active users.”

The complaint says TikTok also allowed children to create accounts without having to provide their age, or obtain parental approval, by using credentials from third-party services. It classified these as “age unknown” accounts, which the agencies say have grown into millions.

After parents discovered some of their children’s accounts and asked for them to be deleted, federal officials said TikTok asked them to go through a convoluted process to deactivate them and frequently did not honor their requests.

Overall, the government said TikTok employed deficient policies that were unable to prevent children’s accounts from proliferating on its app and suggested the company was not taking the issue seriously. In at least some periods since 2019, the complaint said TikTok’s human moderators spent an average of five to seven seconds reviewing accounts flagged as potentially belonging to a child. It also said TikTok and ByteDance have technology they can use to identify and remove children’s accounts, but do not use them for that reason.

Those allegations were not included in the complaint, which is asking the court to fine the companies and enter a preliminary injunction to prevent future violations.

Other social media companies have also come under fire for how they’ve handled children’s data.

In 2019, Google and YouTube agreed to pay a $170 million fine to settle allegations that the popular video site had illegally collected personal information on children without their parents’ consent.

And last fall, dozens of U.S. states sued Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Facebook and Instagram, for harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms. A lawsuit filed by 33 states claims that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of COPPA. Nine attorneys general are also filing lawsuits in their respective states, bringing the total number of states taking action to 41 plus Washington, D.C.