Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita announced two lawsuits against TikTok on Wednesday over concerns about data sharing and mature content targeting children.
“The TikTok app is a malicious and menacing threat unleashed on unsuspecting Indiana consumers by a Chinese company that knows full well the harms it inflicts on users,” Rokita said in a statement.
“With this pair of lawsuits, we hope to force TikTok to stop its false, deceptive and misleading practices, which violate Indiana law,” he added.
The first lawsuit argues that the social media platform misled users to believe that TikTok is appropriate for children ages 13-17 despite frequent references to sexual content, profanity, drugs, and other mature content.
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The second lawsuit alleges that TikTok has gathered sensitive personal data from Indiana residents while claiming that user information is protected from the Chinese government and Communist Party.
“In multiple ways, TikTok represents a clear and present danger to Hoosiers that is hiding in plain sight in their own pockets,” Rokita said. “At the very least, the company owes consumers the truth about the age-appropriateness of its content and the insecurity of the data it collects on users. We hope these lawsuits force TikTok to come clean and change its ways.”
The lawsuits seek emergency injunctive relief and civil penalties against TikTok.
The Indiana lawsuits add to a growing list of states that have announced plans to ban the Chinese-based app from state devices.
On Wednesday, Texas became the largest state to do so, with Republican Gov. Greg Abbott denouncing TikTok.
I've banned TikTok on state issued devices.
I'm also calling for legislation to make the ban permanent and to broaden the ban.
As I detail in my letter and press release, the threat posed by the CCP through TikTok is serious and must be stopped.https://t.co/X4kkFfCDq3
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) December 7, 2022
“TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users’ devices—including when, where, and how they conduct Internet activity—and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government,” he wrote in a letter.
“While TikTok has claimed that it stores U.S. data within the U.S., the company admitted in a letter to Congress that China-based employees can have access to U.S. data. It has also been reported that ByteDance planned to use TikTok location information to surveil individual American citizens,” it added.
The Daily Wire previously reported that Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan announced a ban on TikTok from the state’s government devices on Tuesday.
“There may be no greater threat to our personal safety and our national security than the cyber vulnerabilities that support our daily lives,” Hogan said.
On Monday, South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster issued an executive order banning TikTok from government devices.
Last month, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem became the first governor to ban TikTok from state devices and made it a criminal offense to download the app on a state device.
“South Dakota will have no part in the intelligence gathering operations of nations who hate us,” Noem said in a statement. “The Chinese Communist Party uses information that it gathers on TikTok to manipulate the American people, and they gather data off the devices that access the platform.”
At the federal level, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) introduced legislation last month to ban the app in the U.S.
Concerns about the Chinese-based app reach back to 2020 when then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order that sought to ban the use of TikTok in the U.S.
The order was to take effect 45 days later but was not implemented following a series of legal challenges. President Joe Biden revoked the executive order in June 2021.