Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita this week filed two separate lawsuits against TikTok, alleging that the China-based social media giant had deceived and harmed Indiana residents. Rotika is just one of a number of Republican leaders in recent weeks to take action against TikTok.
Indiana’s first lawsuit alleges TikTok marketed its video-sharing platform as safe for teens, despite its algorithm “delivering a lot of content” depicting drugs, pornography, and other inappropriate topics. The second lawsuit asserts that TikTok misled consumers by claiming that their personal information was protected from the government and the Chinese Communist Party.
“The TikTok app is a malicious and threatening threat posed by a Chinese company to gullible Indiana consumers,” Rokita said in a statement. “With this pair of lawsuits, we hope to force TikTok to put an end to the misconduct, deceptive, and misleading practices that violate Indiana law.”
Rotika wants urgent sanctions against the company and is seeking monetary penalties for each time TikTok violates Indiana’s Consumer Fraud Sales Act.
Meanwhile, Governor Greg Abbott on Wednesday order all Texas state agencies to ban the use of TikTok on any government-issued device. The governor also ordered state agencies to come up with a plan to regulate the use of TikTok on the personal devices of state employees.
Abbott wrote in a letter to state agency leaders that there are “growing threats posed by TikTok” to sensitive state information. “TikTok collects vast amounts of data from users’ devices — including when, where, and how they conduct their activities on the Internet — and provides this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government, ‘ he wrote.
Abbott’s move follows similar actions by Republicans in other states. A day earlier, Governor of Maryland Larry Hogan issue urgent directives prohibits state law enforcement from using certain products and suppliers based in China, including TikTok, Huawei, and others. Last month, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem signed an executive order ban TikTok to state government agencies, employees, and contractors using state equipment.
Also this week, a few Wisconsin Republicans sent a letter to the governor, urging him to ban TikTok.
Social media apps have become a target for Republicans are interested in federal policymaking, who argued that the app should be banned because “the United States is locked in a new Cold War with the Chinese Communist Party.”
