Agreement provides for a limit of two hours of use per day, breaks after 15 minutes and stricter measures to verify the age of users; state accused the platform of contributing to mental health problems among teenagers.
By Editorial g1 — São Paulo
TikTok and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, reached an agreement with the state of Alabama this Friday (25), days before the start of a trial over accusations that the platform is addictive and misled consumers about its safety.
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The state will receive at least US$100 million (R$510 million) within 45 days, and the amount could reach US$300 million (R$1.53 billion) if certain conditions are met, according to the Alabama attorney general's office, contacted by Reuters.
As part of the agreement, TikTok will also have to make changes to the platform.
Among them are:
A limit of two hours of use per day;
Pauses after 15 minutes of use; and
Stricter mechanisms for verifying users' ages.
It is TikTok's first settlement with an American state amid a series of similar lawsuits. At least 27 other states and Washington, D.C., have also sued the company over issues related to the platform's effects on children and teenagers.
The trial was scheduled to begin on Monday (28), in a state court in Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, and was expected to last two to three weeks.
The lawsuit could offer a rare insight into the inner workings of TikTok, which has already reached settlements in other cases that had been selected for trial and had been trying to keep information about the platform's operations confidential.
Algorithm directs young people to videos of violence
The Alabama lawsuit was filed last year by the state's Republican Attorney General, Steve Marshall. The state had accused TikTok of using a continuous stream of videos, which never ends, to make the platform highly addictive.
According to the action, the algorithm — a system that selects and recommends content for each user — directs young people to increasingly intense videos about violence and self-mutilation.
Alabama said this contributed to a mental health crisis among teenagers and caused the number of emergency room visits for self-harm in the state to “skyrocket.”
The state also accused TikTok of falsely claiming that it restricts young people's access to sexual and violent content in order to get a rating that indicates the app is safe for teens in the Google, Apple and Microsoft app stores.
Another accusation was that the company had misled users about the Chinese government's access to American data.
TikTok's vision
TikTok says it developed its platform with teen safety as one of its top priorities.
The company also argued that Section 230 of the Federal Communications Decency Act, an American rule that limits platforms' liability for content published by users themselves, protects it from lawsuits related to this type of content.
TikTok representatives did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Fine of more than R$150 million: ANPD claims that TikTok failed to protect the information of children and adolescents — Photo: Jornal Nacional/ Reproduction
