Court docs accidentally reveal secret TikTok research about the harm to children

Washington: TikTok’s political woes deepened on Friday after an inadvertent legal disclosure detailed how aware the app’s managers apparently were of its potential risks to children, airing explosive revelations as the Chinese-owned company tries to fend off a US ban.

The popular video-sharing platform’s internal research showed that children were particularly susceptible to its powerful algorithmic feeds and that excessive use of the site could lead to mental health issues, according to a lawsuit filed by the state of Kentucky earlier this week, redacted portions of which were unintentionally left readable.

Internal research from TikTok’s own analysts showed the younger the user, the more susceptible they were to the app’s algorithms. Credit: iStock

Even so, the lawsuit alleges, company leaders sought to maximise engagement among youth while touting child safety features that were largely ineffective.

“As expected, across most engagement metrics, the younger the user, the better the performance,” stated one 2019 internal company report, according to the lawsuit.

The revelations are likely to serve as fodder for critics across government who argue TikTok and other social media companies have prioritised their profits over the well-being of their most vulnerable users, particularly children and teens.

On Tuesday, more than a dozen state attorneys general sued TikTok, accusing the company of harming children by using addictive product features such as auto-play and push notifications to keep kids hooked on the app, despite potential harms from excessive use.

The complaints, filed by 13 states, including Kentucky, and the District of Columbia, marked the most significant legal challenge against the company to date over allegations it is contributing to a youth mental health crisis in the US.

The case is being followed closely in Australia, where the federal government and the states are working on laws which will set a minimum age for access to social media apps. Research from the eSafety commissioner showed widespread use among children as young as eight.

According to the lawsuit, TikTok’s own research found that “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”.

In redacted comments, the complaint refers to an internal TikTok group known as “TikTank” that studied the app’s effect on users and wrote a report arguing that its recommendation algorithm and advertising-based business model encouraged “optimisation for time spent in the app”.

Such optimisation is common in social media, where apps compete for attention and cultural cachet. But the TikTank report also noted that “TikTok is particularly popular with younger users, who are particularly sensitive to reinforcement in the form of social reward and have minimal ability to self-regulate effectively,” according to the complaint.

In a statement, TikTok spokesman Alex Haurek called it “highly irresponsible” for news outlets to publish information that is under seal, and said the complaint “cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes outdated documents out of context to misrepresent our commitment to community safety”.

Other states’ complaints were also heavily redacted when filed, but public officials have signalled they plan to push state courts to make more of them public.

Earlier this week TikTok pushed back on the state lawsuits, which Haurek said were based on “inaccurate and misleading claims”.

TikTok is currently fighting a federal law to force a sale or ban of the app, whose China-based parent company ByteDance has stoked national security concerns in the US. TikTok argues the measure would infringe on the free speech rights of the millions of app’s millions of American users.

Under the law, TikTok can avoid a ban if ByteDance sells the app to non-Chinese owners before January 19, a deadline the president can extent by 90 days if TikTok is making progress on a sale. Such a sale appears unlikely, given TikTok’s huge potential price tag of more than $100 billion and the short window for completing such a geopolitically sensitive deal. China has also said it would ban the sale and export of one of TikTok’s most critical components, its recommendation algorithm.

A panel of three judges on the federal DC Court of Appeals is expected to rule on TikTok’s challenge of the law. The company and the Justice Department have requested an expedited judgment by December, allowing time for a potential appeal to be filed with the Supreme Court before January 19.

Washington Post

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