By : thoughtfulnews.com At :December 10, 2022

The popular social media app TikTok has been sued by the US state of Indiana.:

Its attorney general Todd Rokita has accused T.Tok’s parent company ByteDance of violating the state’s consumer protections laws.

The state alleges that the app fails to safeguard young people and privacy.

However, TikTok said it considers youth well-being in its policies and that it was confident it could satisfy US national security concerns.

Indiana filed two lawsuits on Wednesday. The first one claims the app exposes young users to inappropriate content.

“TikTok is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” according to court documents.

“As long as TikTok is permitted to deceive and mislead Indiana consumers about the risks to their data. Those consumers and their privacy are easy prey.”

The complaint says the app’s algorithm promotes a variety of inappropriate content, “depicting alcohol, tobacco, and drugs; sexual content, nudity, and suggestive themes; and intense profanity.”

The app has age-limiting and parental control features, the firm said, and the company is investing in further content controls.

In addition, they said TikTok was confident it could address “all reasonable US national security concerns”.

The announcement of the lawsuits come after other US states have drafted legislation to ban TikTok.

Last month, the head of the FBI has said that TikTok poses a national security concern.

Its director Chris Wray told a the US House Homeland Security Committee said Chinese law essentially requires companies to “do whatever the government wants them to in terms of sharing information or serving as a tool of the Chinese government.”

The Biden administration have been in talks with T.Toks officials for months as they try to reach a national security agreement to protect the data of its hundreds of millions of users in the US.