After youngsters lost their lives while participating in the “Blackout Challenge,” which encourages people to choke themselves until they pass out, TikTok is being sued in California.
According to the lawsuit, TikTok software “intentionally and repeatedly” promoted the Blackout Challenge, which resulted in the deaths of two young girls last year: an eight-year-old in Texas and a nine-year-old in Wisconsin. The case was filed last week in state court in Los Angeles.
TikTok needs to be held responsible for exposing these two young girls to harmful information, according to Matthew Bergman, an attorney with the Social Media Victims Law Centre, the organization that brought the lawsuit.
“TikTok has spent billions of dollars designing devices that purposefully push harmful information that it knows is dangerous and might kill its customers.”
ByteDance, a company based in China that owns TikTok, did not reply to a request for comment right away.
According to the lawsuit, each of the females who died from self-strangulation—one using rope and the other a dog leash—had the Blackout Challenge advertised to them by TikTok’s algorithm.
It also included a list of kids who have passed away as a result of the TikTok Blackout Challenge, including those in Australia, Italy, and other countries.
TikTok has highlighted and encouraged a variety of challenges in which users record themselves engaging in themed activities that might occasionally be risky.
The “Skull Breaker Challenge,” in which participants leap while having their legs kicked out from beneath them, flip over, and hit their skulls, was one of the several TikTok challenges mentioned in court records.
According to court filings, the “Fire Challenge” is dousing objects with a flammable liquid and lighting them on fire, while the “Coronavirus Challenge” entails licking random objects and surfaces in public during the epidemic.
The lawsuit requests that a judge compel TikTok to cease using its algorithm to lure kids in and promote risky tasks, as well as to pay specific financial damages.
To read our blog on “Google and Apple are urged by the FCC commissioner to remove TikTok from their app stores,” click here.
