Texas judge rules TikTok misled users on child safety feature | Hacker News Reader

Texas judge rules TikTok misled users on child safety feature

reuters.com

158 points1vuio0pswjnm799 comments

It blows my mind that parents let their children use these platforms with these safety features.

I just found out yesterday that my cousin lets their 5ish year old have a TikTok account, but they have to allow or deny anyone who follows. How absurd is that. It doesn't block anything about what they view (I assume they relied on this safety feature), and there's no way that vetting who can follow (family and friends) is safe enough. The alternative is my younger cousin not having access to TikTok at five years old. Seems like a completely fine alternative.

I imagine the average person just doesn't think about the potential implications of giving your child a TikTok account at that age.

5 years old is crazy, but by the time they are 15-16 it becomes difficult to restrict them from things their peers all do. There needs to be a wider push from all parents or more of a consensus from society that these platforms are dangerous.

Yes, the platforms need to be regulated more for minors.

But also, prohibition has never been a very effective method with teens.

Just look at how college kids drink when they get to college. The sudden removal of parental restriction has a lot to do with that if you ask me.

I think this is better approached with broad education, and stronger regulations on the platforms themselves.

Part of the problem is that many parents aren’t educated themselves about what is good and bad for their kids. Examples include things like nutrition, screen time, even simple stuff like when to wean from bottles and keeping suffocation risks out of cribs.

> Part of the problem is that many parents aren’t educated themselves about what is good and bad for their kids. Examples include things like nutrition, screen time, even simple stuff like when to wean from bottles and keeping suffocation risks out of cribs.

I would argue that more is being asked now of parents than in previous decades at least. You’re asking every parent to fight multi-billion dollar international addiction platforms on top of working, parenting, etc.

I totally agree with you, and that’s where platform regulation and privacy regulation has been failing parents.

Most people really can’t fathom the amount of data that tech platforms are slurping up, and they can’t fathom the sophistication of the data science that goes on involving their content feeds and data and metadata collection/targeting.

Drinking is down for young adults and teens. My pet theory is that Covid broke the chain of party and drinking culture being passed down. (This is entirely speculative, and based on a single chart I saw.)

The relevance to your point being that removal of parental restrictions don't seem to be doing that anymore.

Education is definitely a good idea, but do note any plan that depends on education gives up the next 5-10 years before results are seen. Works great for societies and countries that think that far ahead.

America in particular has an extra challenge, since Big Tech is based here, and threats to revenue streams will be met with immense opposition.

> Drinking is down for young adults and teens. My pet theory is that Covid broke the chain of party and drinking culture being passed down.

Weed took its place.

Edit: study above says I am wrong in that it hasn't been a 1:1 exchange of alcohol for thc

Yeah theres also way more whippets now

I haven't seen one since 2001. They don't have any of the paraphernalia around here in head shops either.

I see them all the time on the side of the road from people tossing them out of their cars. Massive tanks too like bigger than a 2 liter of coke with all sorts of flavors, even with a hand strap.

It used to be close to 0 (wasn't a super festival goer though) for me, so anything will feel like way more ppl using n2o.

But you're comparing 30-60s dissosiative high that gets fully metabolized in seconds to fucking alcohol - 30 days of poisonous metabolites and 50% of all killed and killers being high on that. And there's MUCH more to mention.

Even weed is not as bad as alcohol, though due to symptoms being somewhat harder to spot, the risk of functioning addiction is way higher. And it often ends up as the substance ADHD spektrum folks use for self medication (self administered action/substance aimed at equivaling naturally out of homeostasis neurotransmitter balance in brain). OTOH, two generations ago ppl used alcohol for that instead.

It's a long time trend around alcohol damage communication.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/693362/drinking-rate-new-low-al...

You're not going to achieve coordinated, collective action by placing the burden of acting on the individual. It never works.

If collective action has to happen to solve some problem, it needs to either 1. be so strongly incentivized such that it's the only sensible thing for individuals to do, or 2. be mandated top-down and enforced.

You can't just shout "My solution relies on everyone independently doing X!" It never works.

I agree that probably won't happen that way. There also won't be much in the way of regulation until society slowly realizes the dangers.

I think we are currently in the process of finding out now that there have been people on social media from birth and are now adult members of society.

Instead of sueing the platforms, the parents should be subjected to CPS, on a daily basis.

Ah yes, all parents should constantly be monitored by the state for compliance with standards, gotta love small government

Go after the drug dealers ffs

Are you a friend of Larry Ellison by chance? His ideas don't stop at kids.

Do you believe the war on drugs is actually working?

Very good example you brought up there. Question is: Can we make the world safe by just arresting every bad guy... Ooooor, maybe, just maybe... Individuals are responsible for their own decisions?

Besides, its only a "dealer" if the product they are selling is illegal. Have you talked to your political representative about making social media sites illegal. How do you argue that, exactly. "That sites needs to be outlawed because it breaks my back button!!!111!"?

We don't sell alcohol or weed or controlled substances to children.

That's how we do it today. They get their license pulled if they do.

True. However, if your child ends up developing a dependance on alcohol, do you seriously place the responsibility for that on the dealers who sold them the booze? I'd call that a lazy excuse for very bad parenting.

> True. However, if your child ends up developing a dependance on alcohol, do you seriously place the responsibility for that on the dealers who sold them the booze?

Yes, absolutely. To not go after adults giving children booze would be insane.

What's next, they were wearing the wrong clothing?

I feel the average person is not equipped to understand the implications. being educated / intelligent means you have likely picked up some neuroscience knowledge and it has stuck for you over the years. Even if it is not your "field" we all have a brain and if you like knowledge then you recognize it's useful to know about it.

The average person, especially the below average person, is better off trusting others than their own judgement - since most people know more than them.

You need to talk to your cousin. No one else is going to.

> You need to talk to your cousin. No one else is going to.

This is absolutely true.

> being educated / intelligent means you have likely picked up some neuroscience knowledge and it has stuck for you over the years.

People in Russia and China have almost 30 percentage points more tertiary education levels than Americans do. Nonetheless social media is even more pervasive and popular in China than anywhere else in the world. Like with the panic about video game fixation, harmful time wasters are almost certainly an effect, not a cause, of something else.

>People in Russia and China have almost 30 percentage points more tertiary education levels than Americans do. Nonetheless social media is even more pervasive and popular in China than anywhere else in the world. Like with the panic about video game fixation, harmful time wasters are almost certainly an effect, not a cause, of something else.

I don't know about Russia but China social media is no where close to American Social Media. There is generally time limits, content restrictions and other things that make the two not similar.

When people go "Social media is a problem", they are generally referring to western social media where it's profitability over any external harm they are doing.

It used to be a meme to point that American TikTok was all (pre-AI) slop while Chinese TikTok was delivering children math and physics lessons.

But can anyone from China or who has been there confirm this meme? I don't doubt, but given the diverse milieu in here, there's a good chance somebody with first hand experience can say something.

I'm currently teaching Chinese high school students, and I don't buy it. There is certain content that's blocked here, but most of what's on the local tiktok is pretty trash either way because t's not the subjects, it's the format. You can try to surface more wholesome five-second videos but even if you succeed, they'll still be five-second videos.

I recall China having instituted limits on gaming for children. I believe there are limits for social media as well.

yes, if you buy into the 200% opposite philosophy as mine, then the words you are saying make it sound like i am wrong and you are right haha. i guess my point is: it doesn't really matter if they institute limits on gaming for children. the fact that kids want to play games all day - the fact that they need to create limits is a SYMPTOM of the problem. are you getting it now?

I try to be open-minded to other parenting techniques... but I just don't have the brain power to internalize how any remotely self-aware human let's a 5 year old use tik tok. Poor kid.

I have kids. We’re social. Spend a lot of time meeting new parents all the time.

I have never heard of a 5 year old with a TikTok account.

I think your cousin is so far into the outlier end of the parenting tail that nothing they do is going to make any sense in the context of common parenting practices.

Alternative theory: your bubble is small, and you socialize with parents who have similar values to your own. And I'm gonna guess that your income or wealth is in far outlier territory. I've seen kids raised like this; in my generation the concern was kids glued to TVs all day, and some of those kids turned out okay. But in my family, it's the parents who grew up glued to screens who are raising the most screen-addicted kids.

yeah, this is what is happening. the parent comment is in a bubble. The world is overflowing with terrible/highly ignorant parents

Yeah, like the parents who strangle their kids to death.

Or throw them to the wolves at age ~18

I think the blame is on the parents that allowed a 5 year old to have a TikTok account. No safety feature or regulation can compensate for bad parenting.

It's two things. When you step outside the HN bubble, very few people have any idea of the dangers and history of these apps. Also, life is objectively harder for parents these days. Often times, both parents are working, and they're working longer hours and getting paid less than previous generations so a lot of parents just dump their kids in front of screens. I'm not saying that's good. It's objectively bad, but that's the reality.

I know someone similar who gave their kid a phone at age 6. 95% of the time I see them they're on TikTok.

Child safety features are not going to solve this problem. All it takes is one parent giving their kid a phone with an adult account and all that progress is undone. I am convinced it is going to take a cultural shift for any positive change to occur - self-policing and, if necessary, social stigma.

This kind of behavior of giving young children phones will have to be outmoded in a generation or two. Until then, there is going to be a lot of growing pains.

You sound so certain that these other parents are being negligent. Despite the fact that my 9yo doesn't have a phone or tiktok, I'm going to argue the other side's case.

You're right "we don't know what it does to kids brains". But that means we should give parents discretion. Some parents want to run an experiment where they give their kids constant tiktok. Maybe we'll find out in a generation or two that this was bad, good, or a nothingburger.

I'm in my 50s. I have watched sooo many moral panics evaporate to nothing. TV, video games, D&D, heavy metal music, porn, literal satanism, and now everyone's favorite whipping boy, social media.

Let it go. Parent your own child, let other people parent theirs.

You should be able to recognize there are big differences between modern day social media and tv/videogames/dnd. For one you were not watching TV every waking moment of your life including while using a public bathroom. So just imagine that. There are people out there who no longer even think. Every spare second is spent scrolling because it really can be spent like that with the lack of friction that a constantly connected mobile device offers. No, this time it really is different. There was never a time where you would just not think for an entire day, maybe if you were holed up in a crack house or opium den. If you can't see that, wake up, look around and be shocked how more people aren't getting hit by cars or crashing off the road, and somehow can still string together a sentence of coherent thought. Maybe that fades too soon; functional literacy already declines by the year.

I don't know where you live, but I'm pretty much at ground zero for tech and my world doesn't look anything like what you describe.

I do find it annoying when I visit my inlaws, who have a television on every waking hour. But you know what? It's their home and their lives.

"this time it really is different" is what they always say.

I encourage you next time you are in an elevator or using a urinal or waiting to cross the street to look around and see what other people are doing with their spare moment of free thought.

> Liu also said Texas had established that TikTok's "Restricted Mode" did not work as advertised and exposed minors to content the company said would be filtered out.

I don't use tiktok, can someone explain what the restrict mode was advertised as vs does? If it's like any social media limiter it's perhaps a softer thing (time limit) than a hard thing (ie, designed to put the onus on the user).

From TikTok:

What Is Restricted Mode? Restricted Mode limits videos that may not be right for all viewers. It filters out mature or complex themes. Some features like LIVE videos and the Following feed are hidden while it is active

So I can only assume that it did not filter out these things.

Based on their faq: https://www.tiktok.com/support/faq_detail?category=web_accou...

> You shouldn't see mature or complex themes, such as:

> • Profanity

> • Sexually suggestive content

> • Realistic violence or threatening imagery

> • Firearms or weapons in an environment that isn't appropriate

> • Illegal or controlled substances/drugs

> • Explicit references to mature or complex themes that may reflect personal experiences or real-world events that are intended for older audiences

It is clearly described as a content filter. (It also deactivates gifting on live and "following" feed.)

I wonder what counts as a complex theme? Surely that is a euphemism for something, but I can't figure out what it would be and certainly don't trust TikTok to do a good job of deciding what is too complex for the youth's minds.

I'd guess not-suggestive sexuality-related content, such as sex-ed. Possibly political stuff too?

Curious what they consider an “appropriate environment” for firearms and weapons

There are multiple Olympic events that use firearms and weapons. Or history tiktok is a thing.

I don't know what TikTok thinks, but I could imagine a target shooting sporting event as one such example.

Whenever I see a list like this, I wonder to myself: "Who gets to decide the list?" Why are we letting companies just decide on their own what's appropriate for "minors?"

Because 99% of adult people have other things to do than manually build content filters.

You could have, at least back when Trust and Safety roles weren't getting crushed by the AI stick.

Theres tons of research which can be brought to bear, genuine problems and challenges that require deep, thoughtful work, and some of the greatest people you will work with.

It is also absolute madness. There are so many insane, broken things about how safety is provided in the world, that you will feel like you are in a Elizabethan slaughter house, just at species scale. This is all excluding the world of child safety. Adding that to the mix gets you to existential nihilism quite rapidly.

IIRC, it's supposed to filter out disturbing or offensive content; any time you report a comment or a video, it suggests enabling it to prevent seeing that sort of thing in the future.

> The State’s second argument concerns TikTok’s representations about whether its “Restricted Mode” feature effectively filtered out content that might be inappropriate for minors. TikTok claimed that Restricted Mode “limits the appearance of content that may not be appropriate for all audiences” and that users “shouldn’t see mature or complex themes,” such as “profanity,” “sexually suggestive content,” “realistic violence or threatening imagery,” “firearms or weapons in an environment that isn’t appropriate,” “illegal or controlled substances/drugs,” and “explicit references to mature or complex themes that may reflect personal experiences or real-world events that are intended for older audiences.” For years, the State argues, TikTok employees internally recognized that Restricted Mode was not functioning in the way it was marketed and exposed users to a high volume of content that should have been filtered out.

https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...

TikTok isn't even safe for adults, let alone children.

The open internet isn't safe for adults, either. There is some serious misinformation out there, and it's high time we restrict the internet to only high-IQ people. (/sarc)

I like to think there's a difference between being fed misinformation & braindrot day in, day out and having to look for them yourself.

Is YouTube or Twitch really better? I don't think people are going to go "Oh well, TikTok is gone now, guess I'll finally go read through my backlog of academic papers on quantum theory"

YouTube is has a lot of great educational content. Maybe TikTok is too, I don't use it, but I find most short-form content to be of questionable value.

[edited to change "full" to "has a lot of" because Youtube has plenty of brain-rot too]

Has a ton of short for content too

I'd say it is, if you stay away from shorts.

Longform youtube is just as slop ridden. Arguably the shorts are more potent because they won't pad with even more slop into these long multi ad break videos of saying nothing ultimately.

And every content creator on tiktok isn't going to move over to YouTube and start posting shorts, and every tiktok user isn't going to move over to Youtube and start viewing them?

I guess there IS a theory that the tiktok algorithm is UNIQUELY evil in some way. It's hard to argue against this theory, so if tiktok were temporarily banned, it would be a nice test. I think the theory would be flat-out proven wrong, personally.

This doesn't even have to be sarcastic. I mean the bulk of the internet is for sure just propaganda and misinformation meant to either part you of your vote or your dollar or both and we are just dumping it into the mindshare of the population and hoping things go well in the next few generations.

People talking about addictiveness but from what I can tell this is all about how effective the content filters are. Tiktok being held liable for the efficacy of its controls is a much bigger issue than this one case.

My son is trying to get me to get him a phone. His is reason is because all the 5th graders have them on the bus. Im so worried about these damn phones. It seems like this is how this generation of kids loses their innocence these days. Like here is a little box full of gossip and porn and things to envy over...idk maybe im just too damn worried lol

Texas judge rules heroin marketed as child safe so parents could get back to doing their own heroin was not child safe after all.

There's only 3 options for the internet:

1. free for all

2. locked down with ID checked age gates

3. sanitized with no adult content at all

If we put responsibility for keeping kids safe on companies we will get 2 or 3. The only good option is that parents need to actually parent their kids.

This is soooo true. But unfortunately, whenever you confront a parent with their responsibilities, they immediately lash out with excuses. "How should I know." "There is already sooo much work to do." "In these times ..." All lazy ass excuses by people who obviously have no idea what responsibility they have.

This comment is just a lazy attempt at changing minds. Why don’t you get off your ass and actually institute real change in the world? We’re all waiting. This is your responsibility after all, according to me. From here on out, all unresolved problems are the fault of lynx97 being a lazy slackass. So says me, with the power of a random internet person assigning responsibilities. Consider yourself confronted. I’ll await your excuses.

To stay in context and say at least something to the weird ad hominem: I deliberately didn't father any children. There is no respoinsibility you might be able to assign. Contrary to actual parents, who very well know that they have responsibilities.

Those are not mutually exclusive. I'll take #1 and #2 combined, thank you very much. #3 is the purview of the advertisers and CC companies.

How long do you think you'll have #1 and #2 before someone in government realizes they can dox people they don't like?

Government and taxes are the price we pay for having a civilization. If you don't trust your government institutions to do good by you, then you could go live on a deserted island somewhere and see how that works out for you.

Yes, you have a point. I must give the government more power because the only other alternative is to go live on a desert island by myself. Hard to argue with that brilliant logic.

What about:

4) Human moderated in smaller communities

5) Self run reputation systems

Plenty of communities exist out there that aren't a free for all, do not perform id checks, have adult content, and are free from children.

> 4) Human moderated in smaller communities

People have basically decided that they don't actually want this.

I know I don't want to visit 10+ different websites on regular basis to keep up on discussions of various interests I have.

> 5) Self run reputation systems

Isn't that basically the upvote/downvote systems used by reddit and HN?

Neither of those address the problem of children accessing adult content. If there is no ID check how do you know there are no children on them?

Why not a layered system of all 3. Everyone starts in #3 by default, your grandma can do her shopping and banking and pay for parking without the constant risk of being scammed. Then jump through some hoops to get to #2 and/or #1. #2 has regulated adult content. #1 ends up only appealing to tech-types and so, due to self-selection, ends the Eternal September.

Because if 1 is an option then I can write software to automate 1 for the normies, which is exactly how the internet we know came into being. 2/3 have to be legally enforced.

what about 4: my hardware I do what I want including connecting to other peoples hardware if I want.

In a lot of the ways we are exiting eternal september. most of the normies are already tech illiterate enough to lose their ancestral knowledge of how independent websites might work. they will be punted into their walled gardens more and more while the internet returns to people who are more tech literate again.

4 is 1 because the walled gardens are also running on hardware they own (or rent)

Beyond a Free-for-all, ID-checked gates, or a sanitised platform there's a fourth option: you declare what you want less of and your own software enforces it against the platform's preferences.

Why would anyone expect a data-funnel to the CCP to be honest? I am baffled that people even use the app.

Will you ever cease to be baffled, I wonder? All the crazy things people do, and all the crazy stories on the news every single day, your life must be absolute kaleidoscopic madness of noncomprehension.

"kaleidoscopic madness of noncomprehension". Hilarious image. Thank you for this. Not the OP but this actually describes my state sometimes. Darkly, I think the problem is I put too much faith in others.

> your life must be absolute kaleidoscopic madness of noncomprehension.

Yeah, that is a pretty good way to summarize the state of life based the trajectory of current events.

There is rarely a dull moment on this rock.

It’s a data funnel to Larry Ellison and the Trump crime family now.

I feel even worse now.

Tiktok was sold to a US company iirc

...so now the CCP has to pay the middleman Ellison for the same data.

I guess because endangering its ability to function here endangers its ability to funnel data?

Seems like that would be contrary to the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

> TikTok in August agreed to settle three U.S. lawsuits brought by young people who accuse social media companies of designing their platforms to be addictive and harming their mental health.

I am so happy I do not live in US where an idiot harms themself and non-idiot has to pay them.

What libertarian utopia do you live in?

> young people

We were all idiots at that point in our lives.

But we didn't sue or blame anyone for this.

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