A lawsuit filed by the state of Indiana alleging Chinese-owned video streaming app TikTok deceived users by falsely claiming the social media platform was safe for children and that users’ personal information was protected has been dismissed by a county judge.
Judge Jennifer L. DeGroote of the Allen County Superior Court in Fort Wayne issued the ruling on Nov. 29, stating that her court lacks personal jurisdiction over the case.
The judge also reaffirmed a previous court ruling by Allen County Superior Court Judge Craig Bobay in May which found that downloading a free app such as TikTok does not equate to a consumer transaction under state law.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company that moved its headquarters to Singapore in 2020.
Usage of the app has exploded exponentially in the United States in recent years, particularly among teenagers.
However, officials in Washington have repeatedly raised concerns over the safety of the video-streaming site, noting that data on users in the United States could potentially fall into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the app could be used to spread propaganda.
As a result, the United States has already banned TikTok from government devices, as has the UK.
ByteDance has repeatedly denied that TikTok data is handed to Beijing and says it stores U.S. user data on servers outside of China.
TikTok Made ‘False Claims’
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita announced two separate lawsuits against TikTok last year, both of which the Republican said were related to “false claims” made by the company about its video-sharing app.According to the legal filing, TikTok indicated that the app contains only “infrequent/mild” amounts of such content, but in reality it is “rife with extreme examples of such material.”
The lawsuit further alleges that an essential part of TikTok’s business model is presenting the application as safe and appropriate for children ages 13 to 17.
The second lawsuit asserted that TikTok has huge amounts of highly sensitive data and personal information about Indiana consumers and has “deceived those consumers” to believe that such information is protected from the CCP, which rules China as a single-party state.
Both lawsuits, which accused TikTok of violating Indiana’s Deceptive Consumer Sales Act, were later consolidated.
Meta Sued Over Underage Users
Following Wednesday’s ruling, a spokesperson for Mr. Rokita said his office is “considering appellate options at this time” and doubled down on the claims made in the lawsuit.“We were the first state to file suit against TikTok, but not the last, and it’s reassuring to see others take up this ongoing fight against a foreign Big Tech threat, in any jurisdiction,” the spokesperson said.
The Epoch Times has contacted TikTok for further comment.
According to that lawsuit, Meta also routinely ignores reports of underage users on its platforms—those under the age of 13—and has “coveted and pursued” the underage Instagram user demographic for years.
Meta has said the lawsuit “misrepresents” its work over the past decade to bolster the safety of teenagers online, adding that the company had rolled out more than 30 tools to support teens and their parents.
The Mark Zuckerberg-led company did, however, acknowledge that age verification is a “complex industry challenge.”
