State Attorneys General are accusing the popular app TikTok of mis-labeling and misrepresenting the safety of their own app in order to get around laws designed to protect children from harmful content. Now they’re suing. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: State Attorneys General are accusing the popular app TikTok of mislabeling and misrepresenting the safety of their own app in order to get around laws designed to protect children from harmful content. Now they’re getting sued. I’ve got a Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about it. I think this is, as I read this, it’s gonna be a stretch. I think it’s gonna be a stretch. Unless there’s specific, well, they’ve got some specific consumer fraud acts, laws there in the state. Maybe they can rely on that. But, you know, TikTok’s no worse than any rest of ’em, man.
Farron Cousins: Well, that’s what’s so interesting to me about this lawsuit because you got the Iowa Attorney General and they came out and said, listen, TikTok says that it is suitable, the content on there is suitable for children 12 years of age and up. The Attorney General comes out and says, well, not so fast. There is nudity, there is drug use, there is profanity, all of these things that otherwise, if it were in a movie or a TV show or in music, this would be regulated and you would have to say that, no, it’s not appropriate for age group. Same thing with video games.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: So TikTok has nobody looking over their shoulder. And I think that’s the problem. This lawsuit might be able to address that. I don’t think they’re gonna get any actual damages.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah, it’s gonna be a supervision kind of argument. I’m not, okay, but really, what about Google and the people that ultimately are the top of the food chain, don’t they have responsibility here? If this is really a lawsuit. I mean, this, women dancing provocatively, thong bikinis, butt and crotch shots, I mean, a kid can turn that on anywhere. But your point is that they’ve represented, they made this affirmative representation. No, this doesn’t happen with us. Everything is age appropriate. Talk about marijuana, hallucinogenics, all this stuff that a child can look at. And as I look at it, the only thing that you can really hang that on is their consumer act in that state and the representation. But talk about, to me, the Google factor is a big factor here, isn’t it?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Because you have both Apple and Google that run their respective app stores the two biggest in the country. And what they do is they say, okay, you’ve got an app. Wonderful. Why don’t you tell us who this is suitable for? We’ll take your word for it. Slap it on there so parents can see, oh, this is 12 and up, you’re 12 and up. Here you go. But the responsibility to me doesn’t necessarily fall on TikTok. It goes back up to the top. It should be Apple and Google that are the ones trying to be held accountable here.
Mike Papantonio: And they’re not going to because it’s money. I mean, they’re not gonna, no, TikTok, you can’t come here. It’s all about money. So this case probably isn’t gonna go anywhere unless there’s some, I can see it maybe settling with some kind of mild kind of agreement between the AG and the state, but I’m just not seeing this as a real case.
Farron Cousins: No. And it almost seems like it’s a confusion of some of the legitimate cases that are out there against TikTok and other social media companies.
Mike Papantonio: The stuff that’s protected by 230.
Farron Cousins: Right. Iowa says, hey, let’s get in on this. And then they just miss the field goal on it. And it is what it’s.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I think kids can find most of this stuff that they’re complaining about, about anywhere.
