Meta has paid one of the biggest Republican consulting firms, Targeted Victory, to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok, according to the Washington Post.Įmployees with the firm, Targeted Victory, worked to undermine TikTok through a nationwide media and lobbying campaign portraying ByteDance as a danger to American children and society, according to internal emails shared with the news organization. The federal suit claimed that as her son became addicted to social media, he was “progressively sleep deprived, and increasingly obsessed with his body image.” 22-caliber rifle as the family was packing away Christmas decorations. In April, Wisconsin mother Donna Dawley sued Meta and Snap, parent company of image-sharing app Snapchat, for the January 2015 suicide of her son, Christopher J. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro is part of the coalition that is investigating the techniques TikTok uses “to boost young user engagement, including increasing the duration of time spent on the platform and frequency of engagement with the platform,” his office said.
In early March, a coalition of state attorneys general began investigating TikTok over whether it harms the physical and mental health of children and teens. Meta disputed that characterization, saying that Instagram was not “toxic” and released the internal research linked to the assertion.
TIK TOK CHALLENGES SERIES
The series alleged in part that Instagram was aware of the threat to the mental health of teen girls - notably that it made them feel worse about their bodies. Our deepest sympathies go out to the family for their tragic loss.”įacebook’s internal documents were part of a leak of a trove of research by a former Facebook employee to the Wall Street Journal, which produced an investigative series that in turn led to the congressional probe. The spokesperson added that “we remain vigilant in our commitment to user safety and would immediately remove related content if found. TikTok’s platform, the suit claims, manipulates and controls the behavior of children to maximize profits and promote addiction while skirting responsibility for child safety.Ī TikTok spokesperson in response called the blackout challenge “disturbing” but said that it “ long predates our platform and has never been a TikTok trend.” Nylah’s mother, Tawainna Anderson, sued TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance Inc., in federal court in Philadelphia late last week, accusing the social media platform of being a “dangerously defective” product whose algorithm fed the viral challenge to her daughter’s “For You Page,” leading to Nylah’s death. The girl died five days later in a children’s hospital.
TIK TOK CHALLENGES FREE
The girl passed out before she could free herself and by the time her mother found her, Nylah was unconscious. She placed her head between the bag and the shoulder strap, putting pressure on her neck, according to court documents. Nylah hung her mother’s purse by strapping it to a hanger in the closet of her Chester home. Then, in early December, TikTok’s “Blackout Challenge,” which dared people to choke themselves until they almost passed out, allegedly caught 10-year-old Nylah’s attention in her personalized TikTok feed. Nylah Anderson liked to dance along to TikTok and share the platform’s short videos.