Craze for sharing videos After children lost their lives while participating in the “Blackout Challenge,” which encourages people to choke themselves until they pass out, TikTok is being sued in California.
According to the lawsuit, TikTok software “intentionally and repeatedly” promoted the Blackout Challenge, which resulted in the deaths of two young girls last year: an eight-year-old in Texas and a nine-year-old in Wisconsin. The lawsuit was filed last week in state court in Los Angeles.
TikTok needs to be held responsible for exposing these two young girls to harmful content, according to Matthew Bergman, an attorney with the Social Media Victims Law Centre, the organisation that brought the lawsuit.
“TikTok has spent billions of dollars designing products that purposefully push dangerous content that it knows is dangerous and could kill its users.”
ByteDance, a company based in China that owns TikTok, did not respond to a request for comment right away.
According to the lawsuit, each of the girls who died from self-strangulation—one using rope and the other a dog leash—had the Blackout Challenge promoted to them by TikTok’s algorithm.
It also included a list of kids who had passed away as a result of the TikTok Blackout Challenge, including those in Australia, Italy, and other countries.
TikTok has highlighted and promoted a variety of challenges in which users record themselves engaging in themed activities that can occasionally be risky.
The “Skull Breaker Challenge,” in which participants jump while having their legs kicked out from under them, flips over and hits their heads, was one of the numerous TikTok challenges mentioned in court documents.
According to court documents, the “Fire Challenge” entails dousing objects with flammable liquid and lighting them on fire, and the “Coronavirus Challenge” entails licking haphazard objects and surfaces in public during the pandemic.
The lawsuit requests that a judge order TikTok to stop using its algorithm to lure kids in and promote risky challenges, as well as to pay unspecified cash damages.
