Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton doesn’t just sue the Biden Administration, he sues anyone breaking Texas law. and this time he’s suing Chinese-owned Tik-Tok.
Big tech companies, and TikTok especially, have continued to draw the attention of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has now sued the social media giant alleging it violated aspects of a newly enacted Texas online safety law.
“Big Tech companies are on notice that I will hold them accountable for exploiting Texas children and failing to prioritize minors’ online safety and privacy,” Paxton wrote on social media.
The Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act is at the center of Paxton’s allegations. “In contravention of the SCOPE Act, Defendants have failed, and continue to fail, to create and provide parents and guardians with the tools legally required to protect minors’ privacy and safety,” the lawsuit states.
An overview of the SCOPE Act can be found here, and the full text of the act can be found here.
The SCOPE Act, also known as House Bill 18, was passed during the 88th Legislative Session. The law aims to prevent digital service providers (DSPs) from entering into agreements with minors without parental or guardian consent. It also mandates that DSPs include options in these agreements for parents or guardians to permanently enable specific settings.
It goes on to allege that TikTok has “failed to develop a commercially reasonable method for a known minor’s parent or guardian to verify their identity and relationship to a known minor.”
Last month, the SCOPE Act went into effect, but only partially.
Judge Robert Pitman for the Western District Court of Texas in Austin determined that the “monitoring-and-filter requirements” of the SCOPE Act, which would require DSPs to monitor certain categories of content and filter them from being on display for known minors,” posed a threat to “content based” online speech.
In his opinion, Pittman questioned the “overbroad terminology” employed by the SCOPE Act.
“For example, what does it mean for content to ‘promote’ ‘grooming?’ The law is not clear.”
“Grooming” is listed alongside other explicit topics like suicide and substance abuse that the SCOPE Act would have required DSPs to monitor and filter out for minors.
Tech industry groups NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association filed the lawsuit to block the law, and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) sued Paxton in an effort to prevent the SCOPE Act from going into effect.
“Texas law requires social media companies to take steps to protect kids online and requires them to provide parents with tools to do the same,” wrote Paxton about his most recent lawsuit. “TikTok and other social media companies cannot ignore their duties under Texas law.”
The lawsuit, filed in a Galveston County District Court, is seeking civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation and injunctive relief to prevent future violations of the SCOPE Act by TikTok.
TikTok has come under increased scrutiny in recent months.
President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that included a requirement for the Chinese corporation ByteDance to divest from the social media platform.
Last year, back when I wad employed, I had a cleaning lady come in to do my house before a small 4th of July gathering. She brought her daughter, who watched Tik-Tok videos while her mother cleaned. And by “watched,” I mean she would look at the first second or two of a video and then instantly scroll on to the next. I fear we’re raising generations with the attention span of a gnat.
We’ve previously covered that Tik-Tok is nasty Chinese spyware, but the issue of parental controls is not one easily solved, nor is the issue of balancing constitutional rights with the traditional doctrine of in loco parentis any less difficult. Indeed, there are multiple constitutional issues involved:
It would be better if parents instituted their own controls and/or refrained from handing their spawn smartphones with mind-destroying Chinese spyware installed, but that doesn’t seem to be the world we live in.
Needless to say, if you have Tik-Tok on your phone, you should delete that right now…