Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R)’s office disclosed Tuesday that it had filed three lawsuits against TikTok, Meta and for exposing children “a world of inappropriate and damaging content,” Fox News Digital reported.
The lawsuits were filed by Attorney General Tim Griffin. They claim that social media giants have violated the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act. This law prohibits companies from engaging fraudulent or deceptive business practices.
Sanders stated to Fox News Digital that Big Tech companies must be held accountable for imposing addictive platforms on children and exposing them too inappropriate and damaging content.
She continued, “Arkansas leads the charge in filing three lawsuits against TikTok (the owner of Facebook and Instagram),” she said. These actions have been a long time coming. Over the past decade, we have seen as social media companies exploit our children for profit and escape government oversight. My administration will not accept this failed status quo.”
Sanders’ office claims that one of the lawsuits against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has been filed. According to the complaint, the social media parent company Meta has been accused of “targeting young users of its product to the detriment their mental and physical health.”
Meta had been “rewiring the way our children think, feel, and behave”, according to the governor’s office. It also participated in deceptive business practices that misled “consumers about its addictive nature.”
Sanders and her staff claimed that Arkansas’ children were the victims of Meta’s actions and that the company should face responsibility.
Sanders’ office filed a lawsuit against ByteDance, the parent company to TikTok, alleging that it contained “abundances of posts dealing with mature topics, nudity, and drugs viewed minors” despite TikTok’s claim that such posts were not available to maintain teens-approved ratings on different application stores.
The last lawsuit, also filed against ByteDance is about the “deception of TikTok” that Arkansans’ user data was safe from the Chinese government or the Chinese Communist Party.
The governor’s office declared that China is a foreign adversary and is targeting children via social media. This is a serious threat to American values. “China is also threatening the security of our nation and privacy of our citizens by using information technologies such as TikTok against us.”
