Jodi Godoy
(Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department plans to focus its upcoming lawsuit against TikTok on allegations that the popular social network violates children’s privacy rights rather than allegations that it misled adult users about its data privacy practices. a familiar source said. with business.
The US Federal Trade Commission was investigating potential violations by TikTok and its parent company ByteDance and referred the case to the Justice Department on Tuesday.
“The investigation has identified reason to believe that the named defendants have violated or are about to violate the law and that prosecution is in the public interest,” the Federal Trade Commission said in a statement at the time.
In 2020, Reuters first reported that the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice were investigating allegations that the popular social media app was not complying with a 2019 agreement aimed at protecting children’s privacy.
TikTok said it strongly disagrees with the Federal Trade Commission’s allegations and is disappointed that the agency decided to file a lawsuit.
The investigation is separate from ongoing congressional concerns about the possibility that the Chinese government could improperly access the data of TikTok’s 170 million U.S. users.
TikTok denies the allegations.
TikTok is challenging a law passed in April that requires Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. assets by Jan. 19 or face a ban.
On Thursday, ByteDance said in a statement in the case that a ban would be inevitable without court intervention and that the sale of assets was “not technologically, commercially or legally possible.”
(This story has been moved to correct a typo in the title)