HELENA – Montana’s Attorney General Austin Knudsen and 14 other state attorneys general today called on Apple and Google to take immediate action and correct their application store age ratings of TikTok by the end of the year. The change will help parents protect their children from being force-fed harmful content online.
In a pair of letters to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Knudsen and the joining attorneys general outlined the deceptive nature of the current ratings for the social media application in their story. They said that without the rating corrections, the states reserve the right to take legal action against the companies for the misrepresenting TikTok, up to and including litigation and civil penalties.
“We’ve known for a long time how TikTok acts as a Chinese Trojan horse, feeding harmful and adult content to children. It exposes kids to harmful content that promotes drugs and alcohol use, glorifies eating disorders, and encourages illegal and dangerous ‘challenges,’ whether they are searching for it or not. Drug cartels have even used it to recruit teenagers to join them,” Attorney General Knudsen said. “Parents are the first line of defense, but their job is being made more difficult by ratings that misrepresent the true content found on the platform. It’s past time for Apple and Google to do their part in helping parents keep their kids safe online and increase their TikTok ratings.”
