“It is not about freedom of expression. I’m sure they’re going to shout that ‘: Minnesota pursues Tiktok, accusing him of attacking young people

“This is not a question of freedom of expression. I am sure they are going to shout this,” said the prosecutor general of Minnesota, Keith Ellison at a press conference. “These are in fact deception, manipulation, false statements. It is a company that knows the dangers and dangerous effects of its product, but not taking measures to mitigate these damages or inform risk users. ”

The trial, submitted to the State Court, alleges that Tiktok violates the laws of Minnesota against deceptive business practices and consumer fraud. He follows a wave of proceedings brought by more than a dozen states last year, alleging that the popular abbreviated video application is designed to be addictive to children and harm their mental health. The case of Minnesota brings the total to around 24 states, said Ellison’s office.

Many of the previous proceedings arise from a national survey on Tiktok launched in 2022 by a bipartite coalition of attorney general of 14 states in the effects of Tiktok on the mental health of young users. Ellison, a Democrat, said that Minnesota had waited when he had made his own investigation.

Sean Padden, a health teacher at the college in the school district of the Roseville region, joined Ellison, claiming that he had witnessed a correlation between an increased use of Tiktok and an “irrefutable increase in the mental health problems of students”, in particular depression, anxiety, anger, drop of self and a decrease in the duration of attention when they seek the rapid gratuity that his short videos.

The trial comes while President Donald Trump is still trying to negotiate an agreement to bring the social media platform, which belongs to Bytedance in China, under the American property of the data security of its 170 million US users. While Trump campaigned to ban Tiktok, he also won more than 15 million followers on the platform since he started sharing videos.

It doesn’t matter who Tiktok finally has, Ellison said, he has to comply with the law.

Tiktok challenged the allegations of Minnesota.

“This trial is based on misleading and inaccurate allegations that do not recognize the robust security measures that Tiktok has voluntarily implemented to support the well-being of our community,” said company spokesperson Nathaniel Brown in a statement. “Teenagers accounts on Tiktok are delivered with more than 50 features and parameters designed to help young people express themselves, discover and learn safely.

“Thanks to our family torque tool, parents can display or personalize more than 20 content and confidentiality parameters, including screen time, content filters and our time to do to suspend access to a teenager to our application,” added Brown.

Minnesota requests a declaration that Tiktok’s practices are deceptive, unjust or unreasonable under the law of the State, a permanent injunction against these practices and up to $ 25,000 for each case where a minnesota child accessed Tiktok. Ellison would not put a total on this subject, but said: “It’s a lot.” He estimated that “hundreds of thousands of minnesota” thousands of children “have tiktok on their devices.

“We are not trying to close them, but we insist so that they clean their act,” said Ellison. “There are legitimate uses of products like Tiktok. But like all things, they must be used correctly and safely. ”

Minnesota is also one of the dozens of American states that have pursued META platforms for having allegedly built Instagram and Facebook features that drug addicts. The Snapchat messaging service and the Roblox game platform also face prosecution by certain other states alleging damage to children.